ESA Venus: The Venus Environment will kill in less than 10 seconds

Credit: ESA Artist Impression

Is there anyone who hasn’t admired the lovely beacon of Venus hanging bright in a cerulean sky? So bright in fact, it is regularly reported as UFO, or even more ludicrously, a mystery planet denied by orthodox astronomers.

I’ve written about Venus elsewhere, but let’s talk about the conditions there.

Under the gleaming sulphurous clouds, the planet has a surprisingly flat landscape with occasional ranges of gently rolling hills.

There are two major highlands, almost continents, but 80% of Venus is covered in these level lava plains.

The dense soupy atmosphere (96% carbon dioxide, 4% nitrogen) gives the landscape an oppressive and murky look.

This extreme atmosphere makes Venus deadly. The atmosphere exerts 90 times as much force per square centimetre as Earth’s atmosphere does on us, meanwhile this atmosphere has trapped millennia’s worth of solar heat.

Venus is hot. At 450 degrees Celsius, it is not quite a blast furnace but it’s nearly there.