THE FEELING THAT

NEVER COOLS OFF

By: Mark Vincent Cabacungan
We often associate that the nearer the planet to the sun, the hotter it is but
actually, Mercury is not the hottest planet in the solar system. It may be the
closest planet into the hot glowing ball of fire, but the hottest planet comes
right next to Mercury － the planet Venus. Venus is situated in between the
planets Mercury and Earth and is 67 million miles away from the sun.
Although this is the scenario, Venus is considered the hellish planet because
of its atmospheric composition.
Based from an article written by Squyers (2020), the so far accounted
greatest advancement in studying the atmosphere of Venus is through the use
of robotic spacecrafts. In fact, there have been several robotic spacecrafts that
tried to study the Venusian atmosphere. Among these were the Piooner Venus
mission of USA in 1978, which is composed of two complementary
spacecraft. The first one is an Orbiter and the other one is a Multiprobe that
targeted to collect data on the atmospheric make-up of the planet. Meanwhile,
the discovery of the Venusian atmosphere was first made by a Russian scientist in Mikhail V. Lomonosov in
1761, at the St. Peterberg Observatory. He noticed a noticed the refraction of solar rays as it made transit into the
planet, thus, he theorized that a thick atmosphere could possibly caused it (Marov, 2004).
On a related article by Redd (2018), she described the Venus’ atmosphere
alike to an oven which is mainly composed of carbon dioxide. She added that
there are traces of nitrogen and clouds of sulfuric acid. In a relative computation,
almost 96 percent of the atmosphere was carbon dioxide, 3.5 percent of
molecular nitrogen and some traces of carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, water
vapor, argon, and helium are also present (Squyers, 2020). This composition,
she said, makes the planet to be the hottest planet in the entire solar system. The
carbon dioxide component of the planet caused a runway greenhouse effect that
heats up the planet. Moreover, due to the thickness of the clouds, its as if the
clouds act like a shield, and so the radiation from the sun is being trapped.
To back it up, even if the planet absorbs lesser radiation from the sun
compared to that of the Earth, the exit points on the planet [Venus] is covered
with heavy blanket of clouds. Thus, at the troposphere of the planet, the
temperature can reach up to 737 K, which is too hot already (Redd, 2018).

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 Around 4 billion years ago, it has been claimed that the planet Venus is much like the same as the planet
Earth with the presence of liquid water in the surface. But, as the runway greenhouse effect due to the high
concentration of carbon dioxide, these liquid water evaporated and soon, they’re nowhere to be found. Plus, as
the accumulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases on the atmosphere of Venus, the temperature
began to rise up as the radiation from the sun is hindered to escape (Wikipedia).
With all the things that have been known from the Venusian
atmosphere, this could provide identifiable knowledge for scientists and
weather tacticians in order to enforce a greater action against the
continuing threat of global warming. As we can see, Venus atmosphere
have been roughly made up of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide,
that hinders the escape of the radiation from the sun. So, there is a big
possibility that Earth will also be leading into that scenario in the near
future. Thus, having all these knowledge, we cannot only be able to
identify the origin of the Venusian atmosphere, but also, we could help
save our planet from become like Venus.
In line with that, future exploration and in-depth study of the
Venusian atmosphere will help us find out if there could possibly existed
biological creatures on the planet with the claim that it resorts Earth way
back four billion years ago. This could also potentially help us understand
better what happened to the early version of Venus, how it was able to
become the way it is now. And more so, this could lead to our
understanding of the probability of sending a living creature to study the
planet in the future years to come (Squyers, 2020).

REFERENCES:
Marov, M. Y. (2004). Mikhail Lomonosov and the discovery of the atmosphere of Venus during 1761 transit
Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743921305001390
Redd, N. T. (2018). Venus’ atmosphere: Composition, climate, and weather. Retrieved from
https://www.space.com/18527-venus-atmosphere.html
Squyers, S. W. (2020, October 22). Venus. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved from
https://www.britannica.com/place/Venus-planet
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Atmosphere of Venus. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus

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