2nd Rock from the Sun

I was originally going to call this "The Fact Zone: Venus," and have yet another label to use along the lines of "The Plug" and "Opinion Time." But really, I don't feel having another umbrella I can put posts under, if that makes sense (and if it doesn't, I don't particularly care; I can't think of anything better). So we get "2nd Rock from the Sun," which is a sneaky reference to one of my favourite sitcoms, "3rd Rock from the Sun" (where Joseph Gordon-Levitt sorta started out).

Venus. I'm talking about Venus. The planet, not the goddess.

You may be asking why (and it's a fairly reasonable question). Well, I happened to be surfing the net, as I do, when I came across a certain fact - the first one listed below. And I was sad, because I realised I'd forgotten it. Or at least put it in the back of my brain. Reading it gave the reaction of "Ohh, that's right" rather than "I knew that." And I was a tad saddened, because I've been a space nerd ever since I can remember - I brought books about space to school in Kindergarten, for example - and I realised I've been neglecting it recently. So in deference to my younger self, I present awesome facts about the planet Venus, arguably the most interesting planet in the solar system apart from the one that has life on it.

Just a quick disclaimer: I'll be doing the general facts from memory, but may refer to Wikipedia now and then for the specifics. As in, I'd be able to tell you the general idea whenever, but I wouldn't be able to explain the details. But here I can. Anyway. Without further ado, onto the show.

Venus rotates backwards, and pretty damn slowly. There are a couple explanations, my favourite being an asteroid or something hit Venus, messing its rotation up. So it rotates backwards - in other words, the Sun seen from Venus (if you could see it - more of that later) would rise in the west and set in the east. Except it would take a long time to do it.

Before I say exactly how long, I want to briefly mention the difference between sidereal time and solar time. Solar time is the thing we usually measure - when we say a day is 24 hours, we're talking about solar time. Sunrise from sunrise takes 24 hours. However, this is different to sidereal time, which is how long it takes for a planet to make one complete rotation. This is because solar time takes into account orbiting the Sun. Let me try and explain. As the Earth orbits the sun, it moves slightly along in its orbit (duh). So once the Sun goes back to its original position, the Earth has already moved slightly along its orbit, so it takes a different amount of time for the Earth's rotation to compensate for its orbit. This picture explains it better. Short version: I'll be talking about sidereal time for the moment. When I say sunrise to sunrise, that's solar time (if you're interested, Earth's sidereal day is actually slightly less than 24 hours - 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4 seconds to be more precise).

Anyway. Venus's day. It takes Venus 225 days to make one complete orbit around the Sun. It takes Venus 243 days to make one complete rotation (sidereal time, for those keeping score at home). Yes, you read that right - Venus's day is longer than its year. If we talk about solar days, it's 117 days from sunrise to sunrise. Still - pretty damn long. Well, that's enough of days and rotations. Let's move onto temperature.

Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system. It is the second planet in the solar system. This rather odd discrepancy is due to its intense cloud cover - Venus has experienced a runaway greenhouse effect. On the surface, it is pretty much 467 °C at all points on the planet at all times of day. Why? Because the atmosphere is 97% carbon dioxide. And because carbon dioxide is that dense, the pressure on the surface of the planet is over 90 bar. In other words, the pressure is over 90 times stronger on Venus than on Earth. For a frame of reference, that's the pressure you would feel if you were about 900 metres underwater.

That's not all though. Not by a long shot. Venus is thought to have active volcanoes. Yep, active volcanoes. Now, we say "thought to" because there have definitely been lightning strikes, and for Venus, the explanation for that is volcanoes. It can't be the clouds, because for some reason, it's not those. The clouds don't form a huge problem on the surface - when it rains, the raindrops evaporate in the atmosphere, just because it's too hot. I say raindrops instead of water because it's not water. The clouds are made out of sulfur dioxide, so it rains sulfuric acid. Yep, just keeps getting better and better.

There's a lot more awesome things about Venus (it's the third brightest object in the sky, it's the only planet named after a goddess), but I want to end on the exploration of Venus. You have heard all the things about how Venus will kill you, so imagine how difficult it must be to get probes on the surface. So what do you do? You leave it to the Russians*, with their Venera program. The probe that lasted the longest lasted for less than two hours. Now, how do you think they got the photos? If you said glass lenses, you were wrong. If you said diamond lenses, you have probably heard of this before. But well done, you were right*. Diamond lenses had to be used. And, the cool thing, the diamonds are still there. Venus can't destroy them (cause diamonds are a girl's best friend. Get it? Cause Venus was a goddess? The only "feminine" planet?*). So if you're looking for gigantic diamonds, you know where to go - the planet of fiery, acidic death!

Well, that's all the facts I'm going to say about the planet Venus. And in less than two weeks. Slightly less. But less than two weeks. Slightly. Anyway. Next post may be about Sad Sphere. Or Electrode and Diglett. Or Slender Man. Or League of Legends. Or whatever. Remember: Rule #1 of Wayward Letters: There are no rules!*  Yes, I didn't feel like the obvious Fight Club reference. And with that out of the way, I'll end the post.

AB