Venus

All About Venus

By Madison Nef

Venus is known in astronomy mythology as the Roman goddess of love and beauty. In Greek, Venus is Aphrodite. Venus is one of the most fascinating yet misunderstood inner planets. Much like Earth, Venus has an atmosphere. However, Venus’ atmosphere is a lot thicker than Earth’s; which makes it harder for modern scientists to gather information about the planet.

Regardless of this, quite recently scientists have been able to peer through the dense clouds and get a small look at the planet as it is. Much like Earth, there are volcanoes and many misshapen mountains. Sadly, there is still a lot we don’t know about this planet, how it looks and what it is like on the surface. However, in the 1970’s, the Soviet Union managed to land a few probes on Venus that lasted a few hours before being destroyed due to the extreme heat. Before getting destroyed, the probes managed to take a few pictures that were sent back to earth for scientists to study.

Venus is often seen as the Earth’s sister planet due to the enormous amount of similarities between the two. They are nearly the same exact size, and they have identical chemistry, gravity and density. In easier terms; Venus is composed of the same materials that Earth is in roughly the same quantities. Due to this, your weight on either planet would only be a few pounds difference because of the similarity.

If these planets are indeed sisters, Venus is the evil one. She is the version of Earth gone wrong- Venus is deadly and extremely hot; so hot in fact that a human would not be able to survive even a minute before being burned alive. What’s more, there is absolutely nowhere to hide from the scorching heat so we can’t even visit Venus.

Global Warming
In the early days of Venus' 4 billion year long life, it would have appeared very similar to the Earth. The two would have been almost identical. However, over a period of a few million years, forces on Venus caused it to take a very different course than the Earth.

Venus lies much closer to the Sun than Earth. That single fact has caused an unstoppable chain of events that doomed Venus to its fiery existence. Owing to its closer proximity to the Sun, Venus' temperature should have been only slightly warmer than that of the Earth. But as the planet warmed, the water evaporated. This increase in water vapor in the atmosphere began a cycle of global warming that could never have been stopped. Water vapor is a very effective greenhouse gas (greenhouse gas soaks up hot air and prevents it from escaping into space). The increase in water vapor caused the temperature to rise further, which caused more water to evaporate, causing the temperature to climb EVEN HIGHER.

Today, it is likely that all of Venus' water has evaporated into the atmosphere. This atmosphere effectively traps the Sun's energy causing the surface to burn much hotter than it naturally would. The temperatures on Venus can reach almost 900 degrees Fahrenheit… way too hot for anything living; at least of this world.

I hope you enjoyed this paper and learned a little something about Venus. I know I did! OH! Before I end the paper- Venus has no moons whatsoever. Since I just wrote a paper about the moons of Mercury, I figured I’d just add that little tidbit in there.

-Maddie