Millions of years ago, there might have been life on Venus. How did it turn into an uninhabitable, hellish place?
'Astrophysicist Barbie' explains what we could learn from our sister planet…
'Astrophysicist Barbie' explains what we could learn from our sister planet…
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00:00Why in the world is Venus such a different atmosphere and experience than on Earth?
00:05Like, why are we having life and, you know, we're like having parties over here,
00:09and Venus is like a scene from hell?
00:15There might have actually been, like, plant life. There might have been bacteria and microbes.
00:30Venus is just about 67 million miles from the sun. Earth isn't really that
00:45much different. It's actually about 93 million miles from the sun.
01:00Planet Venus is this super smoggy, hot place. It's definitely quite a hellish place because
01:09we have had a couple spacecraft go and visit it. I'd be able to actually see one of them
01:14was in the 80s, the Pioneer spacecraft, and it was able to estimate that there
01:19might have once been an ocean possibly on Venus, but a long time ago.
01:30The time it takes for it to spin, so just on its axes like this, like,
01:42so one Earth day is 24 hours. For it to spin on its axes, it's about 243 Earth days.
01:50That's something really important. So what a lot of astronomers believe as to why it's so hot there
01:54is because a big part of it is just constantly heating up
01:58while it's rotating. And so now if we were to rewind and kind of look at the oceans that
02:03might have existed on Venus, so if we have water on the planet of Venus,
02:07and because of its distance to the sun, what do you think would happen with the water?
02:12What happens when you boil water on a stove, maybe for pasta? Well, it starts to, you know,
02:18bubble up. But then what if you forget about it and you, like, walk away? It will start to actually
02:24turn into a gaseous form, and it'll turn into water vapor, and it'll start to evaporate.
02:30This is what researchers believe is what happened on the surface of Venus,
02:34is that it started to heat up to the point that it started to vaporize the water. Because it
02:40was so hot, it just completely stripped the hydrogen, which ended up just being released
02:47out into space, and the oxygen and carbon ended up building up in it and created CO2. On Venus,
02:57because it has mainly CO2 and then it has these sulfuric acid clouds and haze, it just continuously
03:05heats up and heats up and heats up. So whenever it tries to escape, it's trapped within these clouds.
03:12On Venus, you know, their CO2 levels are about 95%. For us, it's about 0.04%. So, I mean, you're kind of
03:22looking at that difference, and that really is the key as to why we're able to have life,
03:25whereas on Venus, it's just absolutely chaos.
03:29So looking at the comparison between Venus and then at Earth, I think that should be just like
03:33a really big reminder of how much we really should cherish how perfect our atmosphere is,
03:39how it was built to sustain life as we know it on Earth. What's happening on Earth is a lot of
03:45times, it's a lot of things that are happening on Earth, but it's also a lot of things that are
03:49happening on Earth that are happening on Earth that are happening on Earth that are happening
03:53to sustain life as we know it on Earth. What's happening on Earth is a lot of times it's human-caused
03:59climate change. We have been seeing, you know, an increase in carbon emissions. We're seeing a lot of
04:04changes here on Earth from the Industrial Revolution. That we're starting to notice is
04:08really taking a toll in atmospheric changes of the percentage of CO2 and also other levels as well.
04:15One small change in that percentage of CO2 can actually affect an entire species. And I think
04:21that even if it starts to increase by just a few decimals, we'll start to really notice
04:28that on our planet. We'll start to notice that certain life will die out. We've heard about it
04:33with the bees, we've heard about it with the sharks, the coral reefs, every planet we've ever even found,
04:37even exoplanets, we haven't even found one that has what we have in our atmosphere.
04:42This perfect balance to sustain life.