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

The eight planets in the solar system have unique appearances and different sizes. Although the earth is not the largest, it is the most special one, because the surface of this planet has both land and ocean, and there are many green areas on the land. , a feature not found on other planets. Once upon a time, Venus was considered Earth's sister planet because the two were similar in many ways. For example, the mass of Venus is 0.82 times that of Earth, its radius is 0.95 times that of Earth, and its gravity is 0.9 times that of Earth.

And Venus is also the planet closest to Earth, and there is no second such planet in the solar system. It is precisely because of this that early scientists made Venus their primary target when exploring extraterrestrial planets. After the Cold War kicked off in the 1960s, the U.S. and the Soviet Union each made a secret effort in the field of space exploration, with the aim of defeating the other in the space race. At that time, the two superpowers unanimously chose to explore Venus, and did not switch their goals until the exploration of Venus did not make much progress.

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

How did the US and the Soviet Union detect Venus in the early days? First, the Soviet Union launched the Venus 1 probe in February 1961. It was the first probe to detect Venus in human history. The next year, the United States also launched the Venus probe "Mariner 1". The first probe to detect Venus in history, but unfortunately these two probes did not successfully enter the orbit of Venus in the end. Venus 1 lost its radio communication signal when it was 7.56 million kilometers away from the earth, and has since lost contact with the earth. The Mariner 1 malfunctioned before it was launched, and it failed to launch successfully in the end.

Although the failure of the United States occurred after the Soviet Union, NASA soon launched the "Mariner 2" probe again on August 27 of the same year, and it successfully reached a distance of about 30,000 kilometers from the surface of Venus on December 24. high altitude. Mariner 2 achieved the first close detection of Venus in human history through an infrared detector. According to the detection results, the surface temperature of Venus exceeds 400 degrees Celsius, and it has a thick atmosphere, but most of the gas is carbon dioxide.

The Soviet Union switched its detection strategy, and they wanted the Venus probe to land directly on the surface of Venus. But who knew in advance how harsh Venus' natural environment was? So the Soviet Union tried several times and failed. Their probes were either damaged during flight or malfunctioned during landing. Finally, in December 1970, the "Venus 7" launched by the Soviet Union finally successfully achieved a soft landing on the surface of Venus and transmitted the information of Venus detected for the first time back to the earth.

It's a pity that the detection of Venus 7 did not last long. It is said that it only lost contact with the ground in less than an hour of normal operation. Later, according to the analysis of scientists, it is likely that the harsh environment on the surface of Venus led to the detection. The device has failed fatally. Five years later, the Soviet Union launched the "Venus 9", this time the Soviets chose to let it orbit Venus in all directions, so it took the first panoramic photo of Venus and sent it back to Earth.

What are the characteristics of Venus' natural environment?

From the first detection of Venus to the last detection, the United States, the Soviet Union and the European Space Agency have launched more than 30 detectors before and after, and only 21 detections have successfully detected Venus. Such intensive exploration missions also made the United States and the Soviet Union realize that Venus is not the planet they were looking for, because the natural climate and environment of Venus is so bad that any life on Earth cannot survive on Venus. So how harsh is the natural climate of Venus?

First, Venus is closer to the sun than Earth, so it experiences more solar radiation, which is directly related to its surface temperature as high as 464°C. What is the concept of an average temperature of 464 degrees Celsius? This temperature can wipe out all organic matter, let alone living things. There are two other reasons for such a high temperature on the surface of Venus. One is that Venus has a thick atmosphere, but the atmosphere is almost all carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. It can leave part of the solar radiation between the ground and the atmosphere, forming Greenhouse effect.

Another reason is that the rotation period of Venus is 243 Earth days, which means that one 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 causes the side of Venus facing the sun to be exposed to solar radiation for a long time, and the surface temperature of Venus naturally rises. Second, 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 going deep into the atmosphere of Venus, we will find that lightning also appears in its atmosphere, and the duration is generally longer than that on Earth, about 15 minutes. Not only that, but the atmospheric pressure on Venus is very high. According to the data sent back to the earth by the probes that have been lucky enough to land on the surface of Venus and detect it, the atmospheric pressure of Venus is 92 times that of the earth's atmospheric pressure, which is equivalent to the depth of the ocean on the earth up to 1,000 meters. pressure.

In addition to the characteristics described above, there are many "deadly" places in the natural environment of Venus, which is why the United States and the Soviet Union resolutely gave up further exploration of Venus after conducting some explorations.

It was not easy for the probe to land on Venus back then, and the photos taken on the surface of Venus are more worthy of being recorded in the annals of human history. But because each probe that landed on Venus stayed for a short time, the information it detected was very limited. Even a probe hovering high in the sky of Venus cannot detect the situation on the ground because it is blocked by the thick atmosphere of Venus. This situation can easily cause human misunderstandings about the ground situation of Venus.

Once scientists conducted in-depth analysis of the photos sent back by Venus 13, they found that there was a disc-shaped thing in the picture, and the other was a scorpion-shaped thing. Scientists found the environment around the two objects in the pictures at different times. Changed, which means they moved. At first, there were voices speculating whether this was the trace of life on Venus, but the reality soon broke this conjecture. Even if there was life on Venus, it could not appear on the ground.

Later, after analysis by Soviet scientists, it was found that this disc-like thing could also be found near the landing sites of previous generations of Venus probes, so it was not Venusian life, but actually a lens cover dropped by the lander during the landing. And another thing that looks like a scorpion is actually not Venusian life, it's just a blurred outline caused by blurry images. The imaging resolution of detectors in that period was not very high, resulting in noise in the pictures, which helped humans associate Venus life.

What happened to the 'signs of life on Venus' discovered last year?

On September 14 last year, foreign astronomers announced that they had discovered the spectrum of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus using radio telescopes in Hawaii and Chile. This news caused widespread speculation at the time. Could this be evidence of life on Venus? Although it is impossible for life to exist in the surface environment of Venus, is it possible for the underground space and atmosphere of Venus? To detect the underground space of Venus is as difficult as going to the sky, but to detect the composition of the atmosphere of Venus, it is not necessary to launch a detector, just rely on the radio telescope on the surface of the earth.

So foreign scientists began to use radio telescopes at two excellent observation sites around the world to detect Venus' atmosphere, and found that the spectrum of phosphine appeared about 50 to 60 kilometers away from the surface of Venus. On earth, phosphine is a highly reactive, flammable and unpleasant poisonous gas. Its only origin on earth is from microorganisms living in an oxygen-free environment. So far we can still find it in penguin feces, This gas is found in the guts of fish.

In short, the existence of phosphine is related to life, and the region where the gas appears is relatively mild in the atmosphere of Venus, so some scientists quickly concluded that there may be microorganisms in the atmosphere of Venus. Some scientists agree with this, some scientists disagree, and those with dissenting opinions point out that it is too early to conclude that there are microorganisms in the atmosphere of Venus based on the appearance of phosphine alone, because scientists have also found in the atmospheres of Saturn and Jupiter before. Super phosphine gas, but the two planets are almost certainly devoid of life.

Therefore, the question of whether there is life on Venus, based on all the existing detections, is not very likely. Moreover, in the future, human beings will focus more on the more potential planets such as Mars, Europa, and Titan, so the exploration of life on Venus is likely to be fruitless.

Will Venus be Earth's future fate?

In fact, in the photos taken by the early probes, some people also found traces of suspected city ruins and pyramids on the surface of Venus, which also caused heated discussions at the time. Later, scientists came forward to explain that the suspicious objects in these pictures were also conjectures caused by low resolution. In fact, 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 things that are suspected cannot be evidence of the existence of life on Venus, their appearance has also caused scientists to think, if the earth continues to allow climate warming to develop in the future, will the final fate be the same as Venus? This possibility exists. The greenhouse effect is a global climate change, which is difficult to eliminate in a short period of time, and elimination requires the joint efforts of all mankind.