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Spooky photos were taken on Venus, and moving objects appeared on the surface, causing a stir in the scientific community

Moving objects appear on the surface of the earth, causing a sensation in the scientific community

By StajilaPublished 2 years ago 9 min read
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Venus surface

The eight planets in our solar system are unique in appearance and size, and although Earth is not the largest one, it is one of the most special because this planet has land and oceans on its surface, and there are also many green areas on the land, a feature that the other planets do not have. At one time, Venus was seen as a sister planet to Earth because the two are more similar in many ways. For example, Venus has 0.82 times the mass of Earth, 0.95 times the radius of Earth, and 0.9 times the gravity of Earth.

And Venus is also the closest planet to the Earth, in the solar system can not find a second such planet. It is for this reason that early scientists in the exploration of extraterrestrial planets Venus as the first target exploration. After the United States and the Soviet Union kicked off the Cold War in the 1960s, each made secret efforts in the field of space exploration, to beat the other in the space race. The two superpowers coincidentally chose to explore Venus at the time, and only switched targets after not much progress was made in exploring Venus.

So what plans did the United States and the Soviet Union launch at the time to explore Venus? And what did their probes find on Venus?

What were the early U.S. and Soviet explorations of Venus? First, the Soviet Union launched the Venus-1 probe in February 1961, which was the first probe to detect Venus in human history, and the next year the United States also launched the Venus probe "Mariner-1", which was the first probe to detect Venus in the history of the United States, but unfortunately, both probes did not succeed in entering the orbit of Venus. Venus 1 lost its radio communication signal when it was 7.56 million kilometers away from the Earth, and lost contact with the Earth from then on, while Mariner 1 had a failure before it was launched, and finally could not be launched successfully.

Although the U.S. failure occurred after the Soviet Union, NASA soon relaunched the Mariner 2 probe on August 27 of the same year, and it successfully reached an altitude of about 30,000 kilometers above the surface of Venus on December 24. Mariner 2 achieved the first close exploration of Venus in human history through infrared detectors. According to the results, the surface temperature of Venus exceeds 400 degrees Celsius, and it has a thick atmosphere, but most of the gases are carbon dioxide.

The Soviet side switched their exploration strategy, they want the Venus probe to land directly on the surface of Venus. But who could know in advance how harsh the natural environment of Venus would be? So the Soviets tried and failed several times, and their probe either broke down in flight or malfunctioned during the landing process. Finally, in December 1970, the Soviet Union launched Venus 7, which finally succeeded in soft-landing on the surface of Venus, and sent the first detection of Venus information back to Earth.

Unfortunately, Venus 7 did not last long, as it was said to have lost contact with the ground after less than an hour of normal operation, which was later analyzed by scientists as a fatal failure of the probe due to the harsh environment of the surface of Venus. This time the Soviets chose to make a full orbit of Venus so that it took the first panoramic pictures of Venus and sent them back to Earth.

What are the characteristics of Venus' natural environment?

From the first to the last exploration of Venus, the United States, the Soviet Union, and ESA launched more than 30 probes, only 21 of which successfully explored Venus. Such intensive exploration missions also made the United States and the Soviet Union realize that Venus was not the planet they were looking for, because the natural climate of Venus was too harsh for any Earth life to survive on Venus. So how harsh is the natural climate of Venus?

First of all, Venus is closer to the Sun than the Earth, so it is subjected to more solar radiation, which is directly related to its surface temperature of 464 degrees C. What is the concept of the average temperature of 464 degrees C? This temperature can make all organic matter go up in smoke, not to mention life forms. There are two other reasons for such high temperatures on the surface of Venus, one is that Venus has a thick atmosphere, but the atmosphere is almost all carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas that leaves the part of the solar radiation between the ground and the atmosphere, creating a greenhouse effect.

Another reason is that the rotation period of Venus is 243 Earth days, which means that a day on Venus is equivalent to 243 days on Earth, which is enough to show that Venus rotates very slowly. Such a slow rotation speed, resulting in the side of Venus towards the sun for a long time to bear the solar radiation, the surface temperature of Venus will naturally rise. Secondly, there is lightning on Venus. From the appearance of Venus, it is an orange-yellow planet, which is the embodiment of its thick atmosphere.

But deep into the atmosphere of Venus, we will find that its atmosphere will also appear lightning, and the duration is generally longer than on Earth, probably up to about 15 minutes. Not only that, the atmospheric pressure on Venus is very high, according to the data sent back to Earth by the probe that was lucky enough to have landed on the surface of Venus and conducted the exploration, the atmospheric pressure of Venus is 92 times the atmospheric pressure of Earth, which is equivalent to the pressure of the ocean on Earth up to 1000 meters deep.

In addition to the characteristics described above, the natural environment of Venus has many "deadly" places, which is why the United States and the Soviet Union after some exploration resolutely abandoned further exploration of Venus.

What did scientists find in the pictures of Venus?

It was not easy to land a probe on Venus back then, and it was worthwhile to take pictures on the surface of Venus to go down in human history. But because each probe that landed on Venus stayed only a short time, the information detected was very limited. Even the rovers hovering high above Venus could not detect the ground situation because they were covered by the thick atmosphere of Venus, which could easily cause human misunderstanding of the ground situation of Venus.

Scientists once analyzed the photos sent back by Venus 13 and found that a disc-like object and another scorpion-like object appeared in the pictures, and scientists found that the environment around these two objects changed in the pictures at different times, which indicated that they appeared to be moving. At first, voices were speculating whether this was a trace of Venusian life, but soon the reality broke this speculation, even if there is life on Venus, it is unlikely to appear on the ground.

Later, after the analysis by Soviet scientists, found that previous generations of Venus probes near the landing site can also find shaped like a disk, so it is not Venus's life, but the lander in the landing process dropped the lens cover. The other scorpion-like object is also not Venusian life, it is just a blurred image that causes a blurred outline. The imaging resolution of the rover was not very high in that period, which led to noise in the images, and these noises helped humans to associate with Venusian life.

What happened to the "signs of Venusian life" discovered last year?

On September 14 last year, foreign astronomers announced that they had used radio telescopes in Hawaii and Chile to discover the spectrum of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus, news that caused widespread speculation at the time. While it is unlikely that life exists in the surface environment of Venus, is it possible that the subsurface space and atmosphere of Venus? It is difficult to detect the underground space of Venus but to detect the composition of Venus's atmosphere, it is not necessary to launch a probe, relying on the Earth's surface radio telescope can.

So foreign scientists began to use the world's two excellent observation sites of the radio telescope on the Venus atmosphere Venus probe, the results found on the surface of Venus about 50 ~ 60 km away from the spectrum of hydrogen phosphide. On Earth, phosphine is a highly reactive, flammable, and unpleasant toxic gas whose only origin on Earth is in microorganisms that live in an oxygen-free environment, and which we still find in penguin feces and fish guts.

In short, the presence of phosphine is associated with life, and this, combined with the fact that the region where the gas appears is considered relatively mild in the Venusian atmosphere, has led some scientists to quickly draw the inference that microorganisms may be present in the Venusian atmosphere. Some scientists agree and some disagree, and those who disagree point out that it is too early to assert the presence of microorganisms in Venus' atmosphere based on the presence of phosphine alone because scientists have previously found phosphine gas in the atmospheres of Saturn and Jupiter, but these two planets are certain that no life is present.

So the question of whether there is life on Venus, combined with all the existing detection seems unlikely. And the future of human energy in space exploration is more on Mars, Io, Titan, and other more promising planets, so the exploration of life on Venus is likely to be fruitless.

Will Venus be the future downfall of Earth?

In fact, among the photos taken by early probes, some people also found traces of suspected urban ruins and pyramids on the surface of Venus, which also sparked a lively discussion at the time. Later scientists came forward to explain that the suspicious objects in these pictures are also low resolution resulting in speculation they are more likely to be volcanoes on the surface of Venus because there are indeed many volcanoes on the surface of Venus.

Although the suspected things can not be evidence of the existence of life on Venus, their appearance has also caused scientists to think, if the future Earth continues to allow the development of warming, the end will become the same as Venus. This possibility exists, the greenhouse effect is a global climate change, and it is difficult to eliminate in a short period, and the elimination also requires the joint efforts of all mankind.

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About the Creator

Stajila

The progress of scientific research and its increasingly expanding fields will arouse our hope。

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