Strange Details About The Planet Venus

The planet Venus has fascinated humans since people looked at the heavens. After the sun and moon, Venus is the most brilliant object in the sky, per EarthSky. Studied by ancient astronomers, before telescopes, Venus was one of the five planets known to humans in antiquity and considered divine (via Britannica). Its name comes from the Roman goddess of love, though, according to Space.com, ancient stargazers thought Venus was two stars: a morning star and an evening star, named after the times of the planet's appearances.

The advent of the telescope and other technologies allowed for greater study of the planet. By the 1920s, it was confirmed the planet was covered with thick clouds, and by the 1930s, full of carbon dioxide. The book "Venus" asserts that these early discoveries led scientists to speculate that there must be copious amounts of water on the planet. Was Venus a second earth? Writers took this idea and ran with it. For example, Edgar Rice Burroughs began in the 1930s to write a whole series of adventure novels set on Venus, featuring monsters, heroes, princesses, and cities built atop immense forests.

But alas, as science progressed, we learned that none of these things were remotely possible on Venus. In fact, Venus is one of the most extreme places in the solar system. Let's take a look at some of the stranger-than-fiction details of the planet closest to Earth.

While from a telescope Venus' cloudy and brilliant atmosphere makes it seem like a jewel in the sky, you need to stay as far away from that astronomical bling as possible. Per NASA, Venus' atmosphere is 96% carbon dioxide, which, understandably, obscures its surface. Its clouds, meanwhile, contain sulfuric acid.

The planet's atmosphere is tremendously thick, which creates an incredible amount of atmospheric pressure, according to Space.com. If you were to stand on Venus' surface, you'd experience 95 times the pressure that one would feel at sea level on Earth. To understand how extreme this is, to feel the same amount of pressure, Space.com says you'd have to dive 3,000 feet under the sea.

This incredibly heavy brew of carbon dioxide with more than a pinch of sulfur produces phenomena worthy of any nightmare. For example, NASA reports that Venus has unusual lightning. Normally, lightning is produced by clouds containing water. But on Venus, its sulfuric acid clouds somehow create its lightning, the only known planet to do so. Further, the lightning, if observed, would appear orange, since as Space Center Houston explains, the planet's thick cloud cover filters out other colors of light.

On Earth, if you were to travel from one of the poles to the equator or vice versa you would rightly expect to see sharp temperature changes. And in most places on Earth, if you were just to stand still and experience a year, you would expect to see changes in climate throughout the year. These are the seasons.

NASA explains that each planet experiences the seasons in different ways to varying degrees. The main reason for seasons is the tilt of a planet's axis. For example, Earth's tilt is 23.5 degrees, which means that when in orbit, the side tilted more toward the sun absorbs more energy. When this happens, this side of Earth experiences summer. Venus, however, is tilted just 2.6 degrees (per Cosmos). This means that as the planet goes around the sun, both sides of Venus are exposed the same all the time; meaning, there are no seasons.

Another factor which prevents seasons on Venus is the greenhouse gas atmosphere. Universe Today notes that the thick layers of carbon dioxide on Venus trap heat in such a way that it's hellishly hot on Venus's surface without any appreciable difference between its poles and the equator.

Venus may spin the wrong way, but it does so very slowly. Per NASA Space Place, a single Venusian day is 243 Earth days. Because the spin is so slow, this means that the usual centrifugal forces that make most planets a bit squashed-looking as oblate spheroids really don't come into play on Venus. It's a near perfect sphere.

What is even stranger is that a year on Venus, that is the completion of one orbit around the sun, is 224.7 Earth days. In fact, a year and a day on Venus are nearly the same thing. It's dizzying to think how if there ever had been an alien civilization on Venus, how they could create a calendar.

Reasons are offered as to the reasons for this slow spin. The University of California at Riverside suggests that Venus is partially tidally locked to the sun. This is a phenomenon that occurs when a massive object holds a smaller object in its gravitational thrall. The result is that the same side of the object always faces the other.

For example, the moon and Earth are tidally locked, which is why we never see the dark side of the moon. Research published in Nature suggests tidal locking also may be a partial explanation for why Venus' climate is so extreme since the slow rotation seems to encourage less moderate climates.

With Venus being so close to Earth, it was one of the first targets of space exploration. The first flyby of the planet was in 1962 with NASA's Mariner 2 mission. Subsequent Mariner missions also approached the planet. NASA's 1978 Pioneer Venus mission sent an orbiter to the planet, which released probes into the atmosphere, giving us more detailed information about the planet.

Perhaps more significant was the Soviet Union's efforts to understand our closest neighbor. In 1967, its Venera 4 mission did a flyby, which also launched a probe into the atmosphere. More spectacular was 1970's Venera 7, which landed on the planet. This was followed by the Veneras 9 and 10, which not only landed on Venus, but provided us the first images taken from the surface. Even more comprehensive understanding of Venus was obtained in the Soviet's 1983 Veneras 15 and 16, which orbited the planet and used radar to pierce the thick atmosphere to map the surface. In all cases, each mission to Venus showed that there was no chance of life there (via Space.com).

Venus continued to be an object of study into the 21st century, with efforts by the European Space Agency (ESA) as well as Japan (JAXA). NASA has even studied sending a crewed mission to the planet, but instead of landing on the deadly surface, would use airships to cruise through a layer of the atmosphere, which is cooler.

One feature of Earth that makes it a suitable place for life is its magnetic field. Space.com explains how our planet generates a magnetic force that envelopes the planet and reaches into space in the magnetosphere. This deflects charged particles from the sun known as the solar wind. Without the magnetosphere, life would be impossible.

In order for any planet to generate a magnetic field, it needs a liquid core that can conduct electricity and spin fast enough to generate it. Sadly, Venus' very slow rotation prevents it from developing a significant one. Instead, the ESA found that the planet has an electric field — a first for any planet.

The electric field seems to be caused by the lack of a magnetosphere. As the ESA explains, as the solar wind envelopes Venus, it draws negative electrons upward. But these are still connected to heavier positive protons and ions, which are drawn down by gravity. The result is a vertical electrical field with a potential of 10 volts, which is much stronger than the two-volt electrical field scientists expected to find.

This field, in fact, may have had a major impact on Venus' development. According to NASA, Venus may have had oceans with water that had boiled away. One may expect to find water vapor in the atmosphere. However, there is none. The electric field would have stripped water molecules out of the atmosphere, leaving only the carbon dioxide in its place.

Venus' young surface means that there are few impact craters. That means that meteor bombardments are covered up by geologic activity. The case is the same on Earth. What's more, on Venus, there are a few extra large craters that can be hundreds of miles wide, but it's more common to find craters tens of miles wide, per Britannica. However, there's no crater on Venus under 1.2 miles wide. This is because smaller meteors just get burned up in the planet's thick atmosphere.

Impact craters on Venus also have strange characteristics. According to the National Air and Space Museum, meteors that reach Venus may be broken up by the planet's atmosphere into clusters and pepper the ground like a shotgun. Other meteors cause large lava flows, which are probably abetted by Venus' high surface temperatures. In addition, the heavy atmosphere of Venus prevents meteors from sending up large amounts of material after impact, resulting in smaller craters that don't extend outward as much.