A Hell of a Planet

In honor of the transit of Venus, NASA-JPL offered up a look at our “sister” neighbor planet. It’s a gorgeous evening/morning star as seen from Earth, but if you were to travel there, you’d find it be less than gorgeous. Or, you might say it has a terrifying beauty of its own.

“Venus is a fascinating yet horrendously extreme place all at once,” explains Sue Smrekar, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “Although the surface is hot enough to melt lead due to its runaway greenhouse atmosphere, in many respects it is Earth’s twin [in size, gravity and bulk composition].”

Decades of exploration of Venus using spacecraft in orbit and flying by our “twin” has shown us a volcanic world smothered in clouds, and a world with an oppressive atmosphere that is so heavy it could crush a human standing on its surface. What’s not to like about that? Particularly if you’re a planetary scientist, Venus offers a fascinating place to study. I’ve often heard that it perfectly fits the old vision of what Hell would be like (if it existed): hot, oppressive, inescapable, and torturous. Great place to visit if you can breathe carbon dioxide, stand up to sulfuric acid rain, and you revel in dodging electrical storms and volcanoes.

Well, nothing says every world in the solar system has to be like Earth. In fact, it’s great that we have this array of worlds to study, including Venus. What we learn there and at other places in our solar system will help us understand the worlds we are finding around other stars. Which, poetically enough, will help us understand our own origins as a star and planetary system even more. Think about that as you watch the transit of Venus tomorrow!