Venus 101 The Hottest Planet In The Solar System (4K UHD)

Named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty, Venus is our closest planetary neighbour and is the second brightest object in the night sky after the moon. It has a similar structure and size to Earth that consists of a thin, rocky outer crust that moves above a hot, churning layer of magma It measures roughly 7,520 miles, or 12,104 kilometres in diameter, making it slightly smaller than Earth, and it orbits the sun from an average distance of 67 million miles away, which is 108 million kilometres away. Venus is shrouded by a thick blanket of carbon dioxide that obscures the planet's surface. This dense atmosphere traps the sun's heat like panes of glass in a greenhouse, causing a process known as the runaway greenhouse effect. Because of this extreme warming, Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system, with surface temperatures reaching a scorching 472 degrees Celsius, or 880 degrees Fahrenheit. Below the dense cloud cover, Venus is a scorched, deformed world that is covered with ancient lava flows. The atmosphere down here is so dense that if you could stand on this surface, it would feel like you were under 3,000 feet, or 914 metres of water, as the surface pressure is a crushing 92 bar. Most of the Venusian landscape is fairly flat, however several large mountains and volcanoes are visible, the tallest being Maxwell Montes, a structure that is 7 miles, or 11 kilometres high, making it bigger than Mount Everest. This hostile, dry environment makes it impossible for life as we know it to exist down here, and even the metal spacecraft that successfully landed only managed to survive for about an hour before being crushed and melted. But Venus may not have always been the scorching, hellish world that we see today, as certain studies have revealed that possibly only 700 million years ago, the deadly planet was covered with shallow oceans of flowing, liquid water. If this is correct, then Venus may have been briefly habitable over a few hundred million years, possibly even long enough for life to begin. Together with Mercury, Venus is one of the few planets in the solar system without a moon, and it is the only planet in the solar system to rotate clockwise, which is called retrograde rotation. This means that if you were once again able to stand on Venus, the sun would rise in the west and set in the east. The retrograde rotation is also extremely slow, making one day on Venus the same as 243 Earth days. However, one year on Venus lasts only 225 Earth days, making a Venusian day longer than a Venusian year. Exploration of the surface has been difficult over the years because of its extreme atmosphere, but many spacecraft have visited the mysterious planet. In the 1960s, 70s and 80s, the former Soviet Union's Venera probes plunged through the planet's clouds and were able to send back data, some even managing to capture the first ever images of its mysterious landscape. In more recent times, astronomers have used powerful radar signals from radio telescopes and orbiting satellites to penetrate the clouds and map the planet's surface, revealing 98% of its scarred volcanic terrain. Although we know a lot about Venus, there are still many mysteries that are waiting to be solved, and by studying this bizarre world, we can better understand our atmosphere, possibly even preventing the Earth from one day becoming the next Venus. I really hope you enjoyed this episode of the Planets 101, if you did then please tap the like button, share and if you haven't already, subscribe, there are plenty more videos to come. The next episode in this series will be uploaded soon and is about our home, the Earth, so make sure to look out for that one. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time.