Venusology (VENUS) with Vicki Hansen

Oh, hey, it's the stranger's dog who just licked your mouth, Alieward. And let's turn our gaze and ears to the sky. Currently, at the moment, 159 million miles away to the planet of Venus. Taking us on that journey is one of the most charming and informatively enthusiastic oligists in planetary history, a global geologist who studies both Earth and the other orbs in our solar system with a focus on what Venus can tell us about our own home. And they graduated from Carlton College, got a master's from the University of Montana and a PhD from UCLA before becoming a professor at Southern Methodist University, and then heading to the University of Minnesota Duluth as a McKnight presidential endowed professor of Earth and planetary scientists. They have worked for the US Geological Survey and done field work from Antarctica to the Arctic U-Con territory. And just a little quick warning, you will fall in love with them in rocks and Venus. But before we cast that spell, let's thank the folks who sent in great questions for them via patreon.com slash allergies where you two can support the show for as little as a dollar a month and send your burning 900 degree questions. Thank you all so to everyone out there on Oligiesmerge from oligiesmerge.com. And of course, for zero dollars a month, you can support the show just by reviewing it. And I read all the reviews, I prove it with a recent one like this one from listener and nurse, Sarah 916 who wrote that the show takes listeners on a magic school bus like auditory journey, spanning from the smallest molecules to the largest existential topics. And Sarah 916, thank you for that. And thank you Lee E who tells their group therapy clients to listen. Hey, everyone who leaves reviews, it truly means the world keeps you going. I appreciate them. And it helps boost the show so much, which means we're able to donate to a cause of the oligis choosing each week. Thank you to sponsors of the show. Okay, from the smallest molecules to the planets themselves, let's blast off into this instant classic in episode that had me beaming every second of the interview. Here we go into the world of mission recon, noodle data, melting machinery, swimming and air, baby siblings, goddess vibes, men, women and off the mark self help books, sci-fi, how to endure a long day, atmosphere of old factory wonders and whether or not it's a good idea to visit the planet of love with planetary geologist, comparative planetologist, galactic treasure and venusologist Dr. Vicki Hansen. And so I'm trying to figure out there is an oligey for this, right? Like is it venuology? Well, you know, that's really an interesting question because some say it's like venusian or that those are the people. So venusology, you know, I think would go just as well as anything. Then good. Are there a lot of people who are out there studying venus? Do you all get together? Do you all know each other? Is it a relatively small number compared to Mars? Yes, it is a small number compared to Mars. It is an expanding community when we had the Magellan mission back in the late 80s, early 90s. It was really a small community and we all met in one room at Caltech and Pasadena. Wow. Now it's expanded, but it will never be as big as Mars. I'm sure. Which it deserves to be much bigger because venus is much more exciting. And which is closer to us? I understand venus is larger than Mars. Yes. Which is closer? Venus is closer to us and venus is between us and the sun. And then we've got Mercury, Venus, us. Mars. Mars. Exactly. And then the asteroid belt and then we go out to the bigger planets. And how big is venus in comparison to Earth? It's about 80% of the size of Earth. So it's just, it's little sister by a not a much amount. But that could be important. So venus, closer to Earth than Mars, larger than Mars, and like a sibling that's like an inch and a half shorter than us, but mysterious and overlooked. Why do you think people are so hung up on Mars more so than venus? Well, first of all, they say men are from Mars and women are from Venus. So there we go. Mars, distant, red, named for the God of War, Venus, bright in the sky, the spectacular goddess of love. And the only planet in our solar system named after a female deity. But in terms of attention, battles over beauty. Thank you. No more need to be said. And I think it's because there's this incredible search for life. And so people think that Mars might have a better chance of life. In fact, I'm not sure that's true. Another reason I think is just because venus, like a woman, she keeps herself shrouded in clouds. And so she's called the morning star and the evening star. And that's because the sun's light is reflected off of her surface. And so she really looks like a star and we can't see through those clouds unless we have radar. And radar was not developed until really quite recently, especially compared to telescopes. So we can with telescopes actually see the surface of Mars. And Venus, we need radar to see through. Otherwise, we just see these clouds and nothing else. What are those clouds made of? Those clouds are made up of mostly CO2. And then some sulfuric acid and a tiny bit of water and other things thrown into the mix. The cloud bank is really, really thick and sits much higher above the planet than our own cloud bank. Way up there. Very, very dense. And actually is a greenhouse effect that keeps a lot of heat into the planet. What's really cool about those clouds is that there are layers within them because they're so thick, there's convection or flow because they're a gas. And that's actually where there might be life on Venus in the clouds in the clouds because the surfaces will find out is super hot, super dry, not good for life as we define it. So that's on land. It's not as it really exists, but up in the clouds, if we were up in the cloud bank, it would be about the same temperature and pressure as you and I sitting here. Oh. So we could exist in the clouds, maybe not so much oxygen. At the surface, we'd be squashed flat because it would be like being under a couple of kilometers of water in the ocean. And it's basically 900 degrees Fahrenheit, so super hot, big temperature differential between here and Duluth, Minnesota for sure. But in the clouds, because they have the circulation, you could have, again, not life like us, but life existing in those clouds. And they just ride those convection cells, but they also, the different chemicals that are in the clouds, they could be feeding on. And so there could be life there. We don't know, but they're good. Isn't that cool? Yes. I mean, let me go get a scoop of this. How do we find out? Well, yeah, we need various missions. And so people have tried to say, maybe we can look into the clouds and see if there are geochemical indicators. There's nothing absolutely unique. So some things that could be, but that's not the only way. Get a scoop that hasn't been planned yet. So the vapor cloak around Venus may hold the answer. And by answer, I mean aliens. Nikki says that there are various missions whose sites are set in the clouds. And even going through the clouds and down to the surface, like kind of diving through whipped cream to get into an ice cream Sunday, but one that is 464 degrees Celsius or a blistering 867 degrees Fahrenheit. But that would just be one shot and would just give us kind of one pass. So, but yeah, missions are what we need to do to explore it. And that's why we need more interest in Venus than perhaps Mars, which is where you come in. Well, it's just such a fascinating planet. But fundamentally as humans and for myself, what I really want to learn about is Earth. And Venus has so much more to teach us about the Earth than Mars does. And you say, why? Because it is back to what you said. It's about the same size. It's about the same density. That means it's made up of generally the same materials. It's a similar proximity to the sun. And they were very, very similar when they were born. I don't know if you have sisters, I do. And we're similar. Our photographs are interchangeable. Now we've gone completely different ways. But Mars is this tiny little weenie being. It's nothing like the Earth. So size matters in terms of how planets work because that's how much heat they have and how do they get rid of heat. If you take a big potato and put it in the microwave, it'll retain its heat for a long time. If you take a little potato, cool off really quickly. Well, the way that that heat escapes is the mode of tectonism and volcanism or tectonics. Not to be confused with plate tectonics. It's Earth's kind of tectonism. Venus has tectonics, but not plate tectonics. So you immediately say, well, why not? Why doesn't it have plate tectonics or more? Why does Earth have plate tectonics? And so we can learn so, so much more about Earth by studying Venus than we can Mars. Well, what is a tectonic and how is it different than a plate tectonic? Okay. Let's talk about plate tectonics as because we know what that is. And tectonics would be any other way. So plate tectonics, we have plates on the surface. The plates are made on the lithosphere, rock sphere, litho, rock sphere, the outer sphere of a planet. And what that happens, we can all do this with our hands, is that lithosphere slides around. And it can pull apart and make new lithosphere, that's what Earth does at the spreading centers. And then it can also subduct and recycle that lithosphere. So how a planet cools is its tectonics. We cool by sweating. Dogs put their bellies down on the ground or a pant, right? And the Earth does it by spreading and by subduction because this is a cold lithosphere. And when I put it back down into that hot mantles like taking your cold hand, putting it on your belly, and you go, oh, that's going to cool me down. So that's the way Earth cools. And then there's volcanism that is associated with that. Volcanism as we spread the plates apart, volcanism as we subduct one plate beneath the other. So those are the plates. Alvinus doesn't have plates. So what's it doing? So what's it doing? That's exactly right. Why do we care? Well, Earth, it wasn't born with plate tectonics. You don't start having plate tectonics. So we want to know what it Earth threw early on. Oh, well, Venus doesn't have. And I will say, never did have. Now, some people say, oh, maybe it did in the past. Well, all of the earliest rocks that we have, that there's a lot of debate on Venus. But most people agree, the earliest rocks are a kind of rock called tesra. So a tesra is a weird geological formation. They look kind of like creepy wrinkles in fabric or these ribbons of deep fissures and chasms. Sometimes they look like honeycombs of domes and pits. And according to the 2020 paper in the journal Geology titled Venus tesri feature layered, folded, and eroded rocks. And tesri cover about 8% of the surface of Venus. And they're seen mostly around the equator and some of the northern latitudes. They're usually the oldest thing in their regions, or up to 750 million years old. And scientists think they're caused by volcanic activity. They're very distinctive. And we can map those out. And when we map those out across the surface, they make huge coherent global patterns. And they're the earliest record we have. So if we can set that and say, okay, but plate tectonics maybe happened after that, because that's the earliest record, then when I subduck things, I'm removing parts of the surface. And so I'm going to lose parts of that overall coherent pattern. They're going to be dissected, interrupted. And we don't see that. So I would say that evidence that Venus never had plate tectonics. So if you want to say she had it because Earthlings, we love it. We just want everyone to have plate tectonics. If you want to say Venus had plate tectonics, then you have to say, well, yes, she had it, but we just have no record of it. And that's just not good science. I also just want to note that there are so many different formations that aren't even testery on Venus's lithosphere or the rockscape, her rockscape. But my favorite might be this huge volcanic caldera with these fans of ridges extending from it. It's called the tick. It looks so much like a tick. But yeah, if Venus had a bunch of shifting plates on her surface, there would be remnants of all that movement, but there isn't anything credible. Well, what's on the surface? Let's say that I were to get through those clouds. What does it even look like? Yeah. So what it looks like is, first of all, it's hot, okay? But it is, there is no water. There's no nasty biological layer at all. It's basically rock everywhere that you look, depending on where you are, you could be in huge, flat, open areas that if you were to go into Kilauea and down onto the lava lake there when it's not erupting, but expand that and look around and just see that forever. You might see something like that. You might also land in huge mountain range areas that the highest region on the planet is higher than the highest region on Earth. Or you might land actually in these relatively deep chasms in which case you would be sort of like in the Mariana's trench on Earth, except not quite so deep. Other places, if you're walking around Antesara, which I would love to do, you're going to be in these just at a much smaller scale, but consider your fingers with ridges and troughs and ridges and troughs and ridges and troughs that would be steep drops. You could walk along the ridge, but you would drop into a trough. And as far as you can see, that's what you would see. So it's incredibly, incredibly varied. Other places you might be on extensive lava flows, like Pahoyhoy flows that are on Hawaii, that go for much, much, much further distances. So on the surface, there's all these amazing features to see, but no biology, no water, and you would have impact craters, absolutely pristingly preserved impact craters relative to Earth or Mars. Well, so it has active volcanoes? I would say yes. We are getting more and more evidence that there are huge volcanic features. I think most of us at this point would be really surprised if they weren't active, and there's enough tantalizing data to say, yeah, we probably have active volcanism. There are these regions that are called volcanic rises, and they are huge provinces. If we take one volcanic rise, it would cover all of Australia. No. All of Australia. It's probably formed in a similar way to Hawaii of a massive plume underneath that lithosphere, but because on Earth, here comes the plume, and the lithosphere moves across. So Hawaii makes these chains of volcanoes, right? But on Venus, the plates don't, there aren't plates. It's like a one plate planet. And so the plume sits there, and it bows up the surface actually much, much higher, just because when things are hotter, they expand, including the rocks. So it bows it way up, but there you have massive flows that we see on the surface, rock flows that are all volcanic flows. You can look at those and go, oh my god, you know, it doesn't take a geologist to say, these are amazing volcanic flows that go for tens and tens and hundreds of miles. Now are they active today? It'd be pretty hard to say they're not, because that heat source is still there. Now did it happen yesterday? Well no, but geologically is it active? I bet my life on it. Well, okay, you told me that way back when you first started studying this, there were a few of you in a room, right? Yeah, about there were 60 to 100 people. That's pretty much who studied Venus. And I was new, like people went around and said, where did you come from? Because no one knew me from anything except my one colleague at Southern Methodist University at the time and his students. And now when they say, where did you come from? Did you tell them Caltech? Pasadena. No, they would go through that and they would say, you weren't just so and so student, you weren't just so and so student, you weren't just so and so student. I was a young professor, but I'd spent my entire career on Earth and just absolutely serendipitously ended up on Venus. It was a holiday party. I'm talking to grad students and postdocs of my colleague Roger Phillips and they've saying this mission is going to Venus and I was, you know, it was just making polite conversation. I'm not interested in Venus. I can't find it in the sky. But so I say, tell me about it. So they did and they said, well, Venus is a planet that we think has a strong, weak, strong, realogy of this layer. And I said, that's fascinating because that's like continental crust and to think a whole planet of that. I don't think that is the case now, but I said, that would be amazing to have a whole planet like that. And then they said, and we have places like mid ocean ridges on the Earth. And I said, those two can't be true. Those two views of Venus are in contradiction because if you pull apart layers that are strong, weak, strong, which the Earth has done in the Southwest desert, we get something called metamorphic core complex. We don't get a mid ocean spreading center. So they said, really? And I said, yeah, it's just, biology. Biology is the study of flow. You know, how do things bend, break, and fold? They said, you have to talk to Roger. So I went and talked to Roger and that started my, my, my, Venus. And then I was grad student and I wrote a proposal to NASA and it was funded and we said, oh, my goodness. Okay. And it was just going to be one time thing, but it's been so fascinating that I can't pull away. You stuck around. I stuck around. I stuck around. And then after that was when I learned that, oh, my gosh, Venus is who's going to tell me about early Earth, which is what I am really interested in. And Venus has a record of early Venus, Earth doesn't because it's been destroyed by plate tectonics. Oh. So go back to the baby books. Venus never developed plate tectonics and we have this beautiful record through radar of her surface, like nothing like what we have a birth. And so if I learn to read Venus's baby book, I can stand those in for Earth. I'm the, I'm the middle of five kids, but I had two older sisters. Well, there are no baby pictures of me because they're my sisters by the time it got to me and they're like, okay, just use this one, you know, and that works. So Earth and Venus, they're probably interchangeable or not interchangeable, but Venus has a lot to tell us and she's preserved her baby book. Earth is repped at a part. I love her. I love her. Oh, so what was it about Earth that got you down that path? At what point were you like, I want to be a geologist. I want to be a planetary scientist. So pretty silly. I love you more. More serendipity. I was at Carlton College. I was a chemistry major and doing art on the side. And a friend and I, we, geology and chemistry shared the same building and we thought the geology students looked like they were having a lot more fun than we was chemists. So Sandra and I decided to take a geology class and it was full. So the professor said, well, you can only take it if you're thinking about majoring. So of course, we lied. We had no intention of majoring, but we just said, oh, yes, yes. We're thinking about majoring in it. Well, Lynn Tenderson, the professor, she got the last laugh because both Sandra and I were just smitten with it. Sandra went on to be a geochemist and I went on to do geology, but more of structural geology, which is how things bend, break and fold. More of a physics and mechanics of it. Did you keep in touch with that professor to say like, you converted us? No, she went back to industry, but I did say, you know, Lynn, you got the last laugh. Here we are. Are you? I have a friend. She's a planetary geologist and she, her name is Raquel, which is fun because her nickname was Rocky. Oh, yeah. Growing up man. Oh, that's incredible. We had her on for the Selenology Moon episode. Oh, fun. She's wonderful. But she was saying that she always tricks her husband into going on vacations where there's a lot of rocks. That's great. Well, in our family, we have two kids who are now adults, but they would say, can we go on a vacation where there's no geology? Because my husband and I are both geologists. We said, sure, you come up with it and that's where we'll go. So they got their heads together and they decided on Iceland. Which has a lot of geology. We went to Iceland. We all had a great time, but they never complained about going on vacations where there wasn't any geology. They've had some great geology. Exactly. Jokes on them. Right. Yeah. Well, what can you tell me a little bit about the missions to Venus? Like, I don't know much about Magellan. Like, I'm a blank slate here. Okay. So Magellan, so first there were missions where they were looking at radar. But not very high quality. And then the Russians, Soviets, actually put some landers down on the surface of the Nierra. And that's really pretty amazing because they did that in the 1960s and 70s. Just a quick aside here. Between 1961 and 1984, the Soviet Union launched a series of 13 space probes within their Nierra missions and 10 probes landed on the surface of Venus. They lasted a flash. The longest visit was two hours and the shortest was 23 minutes. All that work for 23 minutes. But the program yielded a bunch of firsts in space exploration, including images and sounds from the surface of another planet and high res radar scans. So fun facts. Venera shares the same root word as the verb to venerate or to regard very highly. Coming from Venus, the goddess of love. So does venereal disease. And if your ears just perked up, you can stay tuned for an entire episode on sexually transmitted infections, which is coming very soon. Anyway, yes, Venera missions. Those were really incredible because even today with the technology, if we have, if we land something on the surface of Venus, given the horrid conditions, it wouldn't last a week and probably a couple of days. Wow. At most, at most. And that's with new technology. But the Magellan mission was an amazing mission. It was the first NASA all digital mission just across NASA. But what it did was had collected four data sets, three, which were extremely useful. And they're all global. The first is the radar, synthetic aperture radar. And it's the highest resolution. We have 98% of the planet covered in 100 meter per pixel resolution. Is that a lot? To put that in perspective, we have no data set like that on Earth, none like on our planet. And you say, well, why not? Yeah. Because the radar doesn't see well through the oceans. And two thirds of our planet is ocean. So we know very, very little about the ocean floors, actually. We have a better data set of Venus. And that's incredible. When we first got it, the computers that we're dealing with right now didn't exist. But now, really, anyone with a web connection can pull up and look at those images. And anyone can study them. And anyone can put their two cents in, which is really, really good for science. And is why there's been much more interest in it because of the accessibility of that. Just some quick definitions in case you could kind of lost in the darkness of space here. So altimetry, think altitude for height is just the measurements of height of objects. And to measure the highs and lows of this Venusian terrain, planetary geologists use radar, where this pulse of microwave energy is sent to the surface of the planet at a slight angle. And the amount of energy that reflects back can tell us about what it's hitting down there. And they can also process that data for higher resolution, which is called synthetic aperture radar. And there are files accessible to the public via NASA's open data portal, which has various types of measurements and info in addition to those collected by radar. So the radar data, then there is the topography data or called altimetry. But that's the shape of the surface. It's lower resolution, but it too is global. And we can tell a lot about the topography. So on Venus, we have some very high regions that have volcanic features all across the surface. And we can say, oh, those are young because they sit high because of the heat beneath them. And the topography is such that at a broad scale, it's very gentle. And that's what heat does to make something because it transfers, if I'm a hot body and a cold body, then I'm going to see a gradient from hot to cold, which means I'm going to see a gradient in my topography. On Venus, we refer everything to mean planetary radius. What does that mean? On Earth, we refer everything to sea level. Yes, we don't have any water. We don't have any water on Venus. And also, Venus is almost a perfect sphere. So Earth is an oblate spheroid, okay? It's got a big bulge at its belly at its equator. And why does it have that? Because the interior is a little sloshy, and it's spinning, okay? Yeah. So Earth is like a gusher in the center, spinning relatively fast. The Venus, not so much. Venus, its interior, is probably still a little sloshy, but she rotates so slowly. So in fact, on Venus, her day is longer than her year. A day is how long it takes to go on its, do one rotation. Just knock down the microphone. I get so excited. I love it. Honestly, her excitement about Venus makes me feel like Venus is a friend now. It's a beautiful delusion. And what's a year, it's the trip around the sun. So Venus rotates so slowly, because she rotates so slowly, she maintains a perfect sphere. She's just all, you know, perfectly her, her due is not must at all, right? She's not going to smush at the equator. So a day is longer than a year. So that means it's in darkness and light for so long, right? Yes. For so long, exactly. So yes, you will circle the sun and have another birthday before the day ends. This is great if you like cake. This is not good if you're just having a random bad day or if you have a five day work week. Then so let's say that you were to beam me down on the surface. It would, the rocks would look like are they grayish? Are they big? Would it smell farty because of the sulfur? Well, yeah, it would be, but you probably couldn't smell because your nose won't work because it's 900 degrees. Yeah. So take your oven, you know, and turn it up. So it would rain sulfuric acid. I mean, I've worked with a lab. I don't think that smells like sulfur does. So I don't know about the smells. So this has been a hot, ghastly debated a bit. And I floated through data on the science of interplanetary fart smells here on earth, emanating from your very vowels. You can blame hydrogen sulfides for necessitating rolling down a car window. But sulfuric acid itself, also known oddly as oil of vitriol in its pure state is colorless and odorless. So would meeting with the albeit scant water vapor in the clouds cause stinky hydrogen sulfide? I don't know. There are several pop science articles saying that yeah, Mars and Venus stink like toots, but I also went on to Blue Sky to ask a bevy of smart people about this posting any chemist friends here. I have a gaseous question. If you had sulfuric acid in the clouds of a planet as well as scant water vapor, would the process of dissociation create hydrogen sulfide? And thus would it smell like farts just doing some fact checking here to which totes grout he responded more like fart checking? True. But then Dr. Michelle Frankl, a professor of chemistry and an author of the book Steeped about the science of tea replied, I think it's usually sulfur dioxide to sulfuric acid and oxidation process. And you can have a reducing atmosphere, but I don't think they're generally strong enough to reduce sulfate to sulfide. And then this assistant professor of organic chemistry Dr. Patrick Lutz told me that water is neither reducing nor oxidizing in this specific scenario. So I don't think it would be farty. But Jack Adley noted, despite whatever chemistry, the rankness wouldn't hit you because your sense of smell is unlikely to function in the kind of atmosphere that would support the scenario. So if a sulfur, sulfur is in the vapor and no one is there to smell it, does it make a stink? Alast. Smell is in the nose of the beholder. Now in light of that, how about the beauty? The lighting would be very different because the sun is coming through these very thick clouds, but you would have lots of daylight or not. And it probably wouldn't be very windy because the wind is basically by pressure. Tempered differentials, which are temperature differentials. And so when we think about the overall broad global cycles of the winds on earth, they're driven by the sun as much more intense at the equatorial regions than going north. And on Venus with this blanket, it's probably a pretty similar temperature. As you go polar, it will be somewhat different, but not greatly because of that surface. The rocks will probably look sort of dark black. We don't really know, but we think that they're mostly of basaltic rocks, which on earth, if we want to just pick out two rocks, we would say granite, which are a lighter colored rock that we associate with the continents and continental crusts and basalts, which are what we would see in Hawaii or the ocean floor below the sediments. And we think that Venus is mostly basaltic, but there's probably granitic type rocks. They may not be at the surface because granite has a hard time getting to the surface. It mostly gets stuck at depth. And so is there a huge temperature difference on one side of Venus versus the other? That's a good question. And I've heard this debated. And it's not at all like Mars. Mars is a huge temperature difference. There's basically no very little atmosphere to keep you warm. And that's what the atmosphere is like a big down comforter. And on earth, we have a pretty nice down comforter. Venus has a down comforter on steroids. It's very warm. And so I think that there is some temperature difference. I don't know what that is. People would and what it would be postulated to be. But then you have to say, there you are in darkness for so long, as you said, because your days and nights are much longer. Because remember, Venus does a whole circle around the sun a year. And the equivalent of seven or so months on earth were 225 days. But it spins so slowly that it takes 243 earth days to go from dawn until the next dawn. But then the other thing is, is if you were to touch the surface, the surface would be much, much warmer than here. So it's going to be giving off heat into beneath that blanket. But at a human scale, it would just all be pretty hotter than Jesus. Yeah. It wouldn't be like going under a sun umbrella versus jamming it. Yeah, it's not like that. Not like that at all. So gravity data also tells us a lot about a space object. And according to this 2025 paper in the planetary science journal titled mapping Venus's gravity field with a fairytest mission. This planned 2031 mission seeks to improve the data that we have on this using quote, a key onboard element for the experiment called the integrated deep space transponder. Sounds like sci fi is real stuff. So it's kind of like when your friend has a kid and they send out the announcement with like the weight and the inches and a photo. We want as many details as possible. I would like to see the baby. Another thing about the surface that is just so fun. So thanks to a past graduate student, we can take that topography data, that altimetry data and put it together with the radar data, which is like like black and white photos of the surface. And we can put on red blue glasses. And then you can see 3D of the surface. And with our technology today, you can zoom around and actually be like you have endless helicopter time flying around in these things. And you can do this for public talks. It's just so fun. You have people put on the red blue glasses and you can show them. So I wouldn't have to beam you down. I'd say here we are a whole group. Let's all go to Venus and now let's go over here and now let's go over here. Vicki was doing this for a talk to a general audience in Duluth and she says she loves talking about Venus to the public because they have great questions. So at the end of this talk, this little girl comes up afterwards and she says, so I want to know. So there are some really, really steep, steep, steep slopes. And it'd be like being in the Marianas trench in a sense, not quite that, but that's a big drop. And she says, if I was up here and if I jumped off and went all the way down and we're talking miles, she said, how long would it take me to fall? And first I was like, well, we have to talk to your mom. This sounds like a little bit of a, you know, we're not doing any jumping kiddo. But I'd never thought of it before. But her question, I said, you know what? You wouldn't fall. What? You would not fall because to the depth there, because the atmosphere is so dense. It's this dense CO2. So it would be like if we were all underwater and you just jumped off, you would just float. No. And she would be like a penguin that she could just sit there and be flying. She could not sink because she would be too buoyant. Isn't that fun? That's bonkers. Bonkers. Okay, so maybe at 900 degrees, this would have its drawbacks. I mean, I know it's very hot there, but I want to go check it out. Wouldn't it be great? Like talk about a, what kids used to say, I'm sure not anymore, but an E-ride at Disney Land. Yeah. And do we have any missions even planned coming up? Well, that's a really good question. There are actually three missions to Venus in the plans, but they kind of keep being put off. So there's a European mission to go to Venus. There are two NASA missions. And when we say that, the US would coordinate with the European mission and vice versa. Within the NASA missions, there is DaVinci, and that is to go down through the clouds and get a lot of data through the clouds and through the atmosphere. And then basically photograph the surface and with the target being this test retrain that I said is this very old and unique and distinctive terrain. The other is the Veritas mission. And that is one that is like Magellan in that it is a global data collection. And it will have much higher resolution of basically all of the Magellan data sets. But all of these missions keep getting put off further and further into the future. And do those circle and use radar as opposed to getting through those clouds? Yeah. So the DaVinci will actually, something will go down through the clouds. I mean, a spacecraft will go down through and photograph and ultimately become one with the planet. Okay. It'll go there. Because it's going to burn up. It's going to burn up. Exactly. Remember I said that Venus rotates very, very slowly. Yeah. So normally we think about things going around. Okay. And you can go around things both in a polar orbit or an equatorial orbit. So over the top and underside or around the middle. But the spacecraft, if he says doesn't even have to move much. Just kind of like sitting on a bench and watching a carousel go by. But Venus, because she's rotating, we can just stay in one plane. And she just rotates underneath us, kind of like rolling a ball of yarn. You know? And that's the way Magellan collected all of these data sets are all in these little noodles. And that's what they were called. But it's just like one little noodle and another little noodle. They're about 25 kilometers wide. And then they were just all stitched together. Oh, wow. To give us this incredible global picture. Isn't that elegant? Yes. I just fully knew that at some point we're going to get so close that we're just going to get sucked right in. And you know, there goes Magellan. Magellan is now one with Venus. Very poetic. Before this planned 1994 crash into Venus, Magellan had arrived in her orbit in 1990 to make detailed measurements and also using arrow breaking into the clouds to slow it down when it needed to. It saved up to nine times the fuel just by using the atmosphere itself, very clever. So there you are working with that planet in a way that you couldn't work with Mars or with Earth because of its differences. So I don't know how we got on that. But it's just elegant. I love it. I have some great questions from listeners. Can I ask? Oh, absolutely. No, I don't like questions. No. And before we get into that mailbag, let's launch some cash at a cause close to theologist Hart. And this week we're splitting it between the nonprofit planetary science institute, which is dedicated to solar system exploration. They conduct field work on all continents around the world. They're also actively involved in science education and public outreach through school programs, children's books, popular science books, and art. I suppose also podcasts will donate to them as well as Vicky's beloved nature conservancy. She says to take care that our precious planet might continue to allow us to be part of it. Our links to those causes are in the show notes and thank you to sponsors for enabling us to donate to them. Okay. Your Venus questions, patrons. If you would like to know what topics we have coming up and submit your questions, you can hit up patreon.com slash allergies to join for a buck a month. And we do our best to ask as many as conversationaly possible. This is what I should have asked up front. But e. Renabee Scott, Umaya, Sam, Megan the librarian, RJ Doige, Haya and Jasmine wanted to know why we're going to be asked why have we gendered the planets? Why do we say she when we talk about her? Well, I don't know why we gendered the planets. I think that goes back to the Greeks and Romans because those were, you know, of gods and goddesses. And why did we decide that Mars was a male god and Venus was a female god? I have no idea. I could imagine that with Venus, because she's an evening star and a morning star. And so sort of some beauty and elusiveness, but I'm like them inquiring minds want to know. In scientific surface, is she referred to as a sheer earn it? You know, that's really funny. It's all a personal thing. So some people get really upset when you refer to planets as him or her. But you know, for me, for Venus, we haven't even scratched the surface. We don't know the surface age. That is the age of her, her skin very well. She's veiled in things. And so I don't like cultural differences between male and female, but that's a cultural thing that seems to fit for this planet. But it's, it's totally personal. And a lot of people don't care. And some people it gets a be in their bonnet. Yeah. Oh, I like it. I do too. I think it's cute. It does not take things too literally or literally speaking of which a blockbuster best selling 1992 book that continues to live in the minds of humans is titled Menor for Mars, Women are for Venus, a practical guide for improving communication and getting what you want in your relationships. And this heteronormative tone begins with this touching tale from the author who is a relationship counselor with an unaccredited PhD and his wife Bonnie, who had just given birth to their daughter and whose nether regions were torn to shreds. And the baby had kept them awake for days on end, but less than a week after Bonnie gave birth when she couldn't walk and she was on pain killers. The author went back to work five days later, leaving her home out of medicine and too afraid to call him at work and disrupt his day. So she called his brother who forgot to pick up her medicine. When the author got home and she said, I've been in excruciating pain and your brother flaked. It's been a bad day, the author writes of his reaction. At this point I exploded. My fuse was also very short that day. I was angry that she hadn't called me. I was furious that she was blaming me when I didn't even know she was in pain. After exchanging a few harsh words, I headed for the door. I was fired, irritable and it hurt enough. We both had reached our limits. Then his wife cries and begs him to comfort her. And a book about male-female relations was born tearing a new asshole into the self-help genre and selling 15 million copies. And men are from Mars, women are from Venus, includes hot chapters such as men go to their caves and women talk and how to motivate the opposite sex and scoring points with the opposite sex. It also provided a foundation of thought such as two people of different genders have no common ground as humans, but have to approach each other like aliens to be manipulated via their native language. It also probably confused a lot of people who didn't know much about astronomy or evolution on Earth. Were you already studying Venus and also your husband, a geologist, when men are from Mars, women are from Venus? Did that book piss you off? I have to look that up, but I think men are from Mars, women are from Venus came out before the Magellan mission. And that's when I would have gotten onto all of that. I think the book did piss me off a bit, but totally independent of this. I was like, this is just a stupid. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But that was like, I don't associate that with Venus the planet. She's just above all that. Yeah, exactly. So in terms of pop cultural references like Lady Gaga songs or Bjork crooning about Venus as a boy and Ray Bradbury's all summer in a day or the short story, The Long Rain about the Venus atmosphere, Wonder Woman's Venuecian allies and a bunch of space age movies and comic books. Well, it's by the way that. I'm not much of a science fiction person. Unlike most planetary people are all about science fiction. And I'm not that fascinated by it. I'm just more fascinated by the planet. And to me, it's much more interesting than any science fiction. So I won't remember who the author was, but there was a recent like within the last couple of years, an author. Analy knew it's is the author of the terror formers. And Vicki says it's not about Venus per se, but takes place in the far future on another planet. And inspiration from Venus was their motivation for reaching out to Vicki who says that she loves anything that makes one think in different ways and that it's a really fun book. Analy journalist and science author and now using they then pronouns reached out to chat planetary geology. Who wrote a book about Venus and called me and said, you know, I want to check some things out. And so it was so much fun to talk to her because I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, this planet is much, much more interesting than the credit you're giving it. And that actually made her change the way she was writing about it because she had to play tectonics in it and it's like, no, but other fascinating things. And I read the book, but I read a book. I enjoy it. And then I put it down and it's gone. If it's in science, it sticks, but books, it doesn't. It was a wonderful book and a lot of fun. But I'm just not much of a science fiction reader. Yeah. I mean, truth is more fascinating than fiction to me. It is. Yes. What about private missions? Sally Shaver and Milan Yecki wanted to know, Sarah Sager's Venus, Life Finder missions are very exciting. What do you think about robotic exploration? Is that on the table? Well, you know, robotic exploration to me is absolutely the way to go for all of these things. If we don't pollute a planet, we don't have to take so many other energies. We can have robots do things. Are they geologists? No, they're not. There's eyes on things, but we can get so, so, so much more data, so much more comprehensive data, so many different data sets were just not limited by the limits of humans. And it's just, to me, absolutely, scientifically the way to go. So Vicky does not yearn for the bouncing among Venus' hot clouds. She's like, I'm good. I mean, if I'm going to go on adventures, I'll go out and do some great biking or snowshoeing or a canoe trip or things. There's so much on Earth that I'm going to do for an adventure. But if I want adventures in science, I want really good data and robotics are the way to go, I think, for basically all of our missions. For Venus, you said, you know, what about, could we sample things? There's so many clever things to look at the clouds, but you could have a mission that what you send is basically a glider plane. Do you put solar panels on the wings and you put collectors all under the wings, like all kinds of, you just load that baby up, okay? Like payload up the wazoo. And this glider, it goes down through the clouds and collects all this data. It can even go beneath the clouds, collect all kinds of data on the surface. It starts to say robotically, oh, I'm running out of energy. So it just sends it back up, recharges those, goes back down and it could go endlessly. You know, and so you could have time sensitive data. You could have tracking that would go for years. You could have so much different things. And so there's just so many elegant types of missions that you could have. And you could do this with someone who's got extra change to throw around, you know, not me, but they're one could actually like really look at fascinating questions about Venus, the plow blank, but also the surface, but also life. And it could be amazing. And at probably a fraction of a cost. What about when they're collecting, when that glider would be collecting all of that data, does it analyze it on board and then beam it back to us? How does that work? Oh, it's also really, really great question. And this, when the Magellan mission went, which gave us amazing data, the people who designed that mission had to use 1970s technology. Now probably a lot of your audience, you know, they're like, that's older than my grandparents. Yeah. But that's the technology they were using. So now we have so much more things are so much smaller and we can do a lot more processing on board. But what you do is when you come back up above the clouds, you're beaming that data back to earth. You have to be at the right orientation to the earth and you have to have a place on earth that can accept it. And it's nuts that the Soviets were able to do this in the 60s. I mean, well, that is nutty. And not they just didn't put down one lander. I mean, several of them. And there what they did is the landers went down, the landers stayed there, but they beamed data back. It is truly, truly mind-boggling what they did. And you know, you can say, and people do complain about the data and it's like, well, oh my goodness, you know, it's not the quality, you know, but just they did that is amazing. And they actually have photographs of the surface that were being backed, but true surface photographs, you know, of like the rocky surface right where they landed. It is mind-boggling what they did. Truly like, you know, amazing. And two first-time question askers. Emma Kirkmeyer and Ashley P. wanted to know in Emma's words, why is the atmosphere on Venus the way it is? And Ashley P. asked, does it rain chemicals there like it does water here? Would the sulfuric acid, would the acid rain destroy a lot of that? Yes. Yeah. And when we're looking at all the electronics, the heat and the caustic environment are just going to, that just fry them, just wipe them out. But if you are up under the cloud bank, then you're not in that caustic environment. So landing on the surface is one thing, but back to that glider or people have proposed balloons or something. But the glider we'd have a lot more control of than a balloon. But there you can keep your instruments much safer and out of that caustic environment than if you're landing on the surface. Well, what about the past of it? Melenike first-time question asker says long-time listener. First time question asker. Carol Young as well as Thistle Buzinger, Nick Rider, Michael, Aura Victor, Lily, wanted to know in Melenna's words, is there any truth to the idea that Venus was once habitable? Could it ever become habitable once again? Was it ever habitable? Well, the surface might have been early on. Earth, we keep pushing life back earlier and earlier on Earth. And the two planets were probably the most similar for the first 2.5 billion years of their history. This is basically half of their history and life was established on Earth well within that. At 3.5 and probably we keep pushing it back further, billion years, 3.5 billion years. So Earth and Venus, sister sibling planets about 4.6 billion years old who looked a lot alike in their youth and some scientists are now saying that life on Earth may have started at its relative infancy around 4.2 billion years ago. And by the way, did you know that like how a century is 100 years and a millennium is a thousand, a billion years has a name. It's called a gigantic. So Venus certainly could have been. We think that there was Venus once had an ocean of water. Now we always want to say that life is required water and that's life as we know it. But we really have to think about how we define life. And that's something that is a whole nother conversation. But if we just stick with water, base life, Venus could have had that early in her history as Earth has early life. As I say that now on the surface of Venus, we've never found extreme a files, we find extreme a files on Earth that are in extreme conditions, but not as extreme as what we see on the surface of Venus. However, that life could be up in the clouds and could have stayed, you know, existed there or could have moved there just as life has moved around, you know, on Earth. In the future, it's a hot, hot, dry, dry planet. And it's probably only going to get hotter and drier. And so we're not going to ever terraform Venus the way we may or may not do the moon or Mars. And plate tectonics is something that is a real regulator of the Earth of our climate. And Venus doesn't have plate tectonics. And if she was ever to develop it, it probably had to be early in her history in a tight window of conditions. And she lost her chance. And so, you know, in terms of it cooling down as a planet or anything like that, no. Yeah. Well, a few people had great questions, Buggena rug and Killian Senpal and Rob H wanted to ask about and red handed scientists, Buggena rug said, okay, so I heard it's scientifically possible that there could be life in the atmosphere of Venus. Is this real? But I thought Killian's question of could the life be anaerobic since there's so much carbon dioxide? Yeah, we could have all different kinds of life there in that. Absolutely. And look at the life at mid ocean spreading centers on Earth, very, very different. They don't live on sunlight. So yeah, absolutely. And there could be forms that exist on Earth in unique environments. And that could be what is very typical on Venus. And there could be a range of different lives, styles that consume different things on Venus within the clouds. So that's such an open question. And I think what we need are data and we need open minds. And sometime open minds are harder to combine than the data. And the open minds are just like your listeners to say, well, wait a second. Maybe it could be life that does X, Y or Z instead of ABC as we want to force it into on Earth. We have a whole episode on aliens with a NASA scientist, Dr. Kevin Han. We also have a UFO episode. So if you need more info on those, here is your sign. Speaking of signs, let's see. Some people asked about, um, a lot of people asked about Venus associated with love and astrology. What's not to love? Right. Just had come up in conversations a lot of people like, oh my God, in my son house, she nodded like a bobble head going down a gravel road. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I don't know much about that myself. I don't either. And is to find her in this guy, is it, is it like look for just the brightest star in the morning or evening? Yeah. And it's going to be low in the horizon. She never rises up high. Why? Because she's between us and the sun. So think of Venus as being closer to the sun. So you're going to see her near the sun. But at the darkest time of day when the sun isn't quite outshining her. And she's low in the eastern sky before sunrise as the morning star or in the western sky after sunset as the evening star. So Mars, because it's, it's away from us on the sun. It can be, see it. Mars, I have no problem calling it Mars can be high in the sky Jupiter, Saturn can be high in the sky. But Venus can only be low in the sky. And you're exactly right. Brightest thing in the morning and in the evening. And you know, depending on what it is. The other thing that that Venus will sometimes appear brighter and other times less bright. Because she's between us and the sun. Think about sometimes she's very close to us. And yet still reflecting the sun's light. And other times when she's on the opposite side of the sun. We can still see it reflecting the sun's light. But she's very far from us. And so she actually will look different in size. But like the moon, if you can resolve it, which we can't with our naked eye. But you could actually see Venus can have phases in the same way the moon can. Because you could see just half of Venus lit. Oh, that's so cool. Well, I know that you are an earth scientist. And this is a big question on all of our minds. Joel Henderson, Karen Nungasser. Aramifarias, wondering why it. Well, Bartos, Jen's girl, Avarez, Kate, Aravicter and Aviosli and Thistle wanted to know about Earth and Venus. And Kate asked, might climate change increase the likelihood of Earth's atmosphere following the path of Venus? A lot about kind of the climate change. What can we learn about climate change and greenhouse gases here that we are looking at on Venus? Yeah. So Venus is a greenhouse planet. And what we can learn is we don't want to go there. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we don't want greenhouse gases. Now she's an extreme because we all know that CO2 is such a powerful greenhouse gas. So it's methane. But Venus has probably as much carbon dioxide as the Earth. But Earth has locked that carbon dioxide into rocks. So limestones and marbles and those sorts of things are all carbon dioxide have lots and lots of carbon dioxide trapped within them. So if we wanted to make Earth like Venus really quickly, we would somehow release all that carbon dioxide. So that's going to the extreme. But we are making our planet too hot. Will we make it hot so that plate tectonics will shut down and regulate probably not. What we will do to this planet going the way we are is we are going to make it so that humans can't live on this planet anymore. I think the planet is going to go on and without us and we will be a blip and it will probably say, good riddance on that one. I know. Yeah. And so that's what we can learn is that, you know, this is serious and we don't want to go there because it's, we're not going to ruin the Earth but we're talking about the Earth for us. The Earth is a planet is going to go on. It's whether we're going to be a part of that or not. And the rate we're going, it's not. Yeah. Are a lot of, are more space agencies looking to Venus as sort of a prediction model? Well, people say that for missions to say, I think it's political, frankly. Oh, well, learn from, and I want to say, no, we don't have to take a mission there to learn more. We, we know what we need to do. And we just have to do it. By saying, Venus is going to give us magical answers with that. No, we know what we need to do. Stop procrastinating and do it. Yeah. We have the data we need. Yeah. Venus is fascinating to study but not for those reasons. Yeah. What is the hardest part about your job? What gets you? It could be petty. It could be huge. Yeah. So, I'll first say the most fun part of my job is doing the exploration with open minds, with students, with colleagues, with people in public forums that cause us to just ask questions, which I think is so human. It's just so human to ask questions and that's what's so much fun. What I don't like about it is the science becomes about individuals and about me, me, me. And you lose sight of the data and it should just be fun to be able to try out different hypotheses and say, oh my gosh, okay, that was wrong. But we got somewhere because we did the data for this reason and that reason. And my colleague Roger Phillips, who was that geophysicist who first got me onto Venus, what was so much fun was working with Roger because we could listen to each other, learn from each other, bounce things back and forth. And then we could come up with something and say, blah, blah, blah. And then we come up with other data and say, oh, gosh, we were wrong. And we could actually even put that in the scientific literature. That was an idea at the time. It fit the data, but now we have more data. That was wrong. And that's okay. If you're not making mistakes, you are not doing science. Oh, I love that. And that's my biggest frustration. And I see that so much of hanging on to things that I know people know are wrong. And when we're looking at something so interesting and exciting as how planets work and evolve and interact through time is that we're going to be wrong so much of the time. And that's okay. That's how we learn. But the fun of it is to put things together and you need consistency and that attitude that science is right. Science is fluid. Science is ever changing. And that's what bugs me the most is that not making mistakes, not admitting that we're wrong. I'm wrong so many times, so, so many times. And that's how I learn. That's the best message ever. And I feel like even for creative fields, like make mistakes, try something. It does not have to be perfect the first time out. No. Or the 10th or the whatever. Yeah, just keep, you know, I'm a potter. I play with clay. I love it. And it's like, oh, just absolutely blew that. And, you know, I learn from it. Sometimes it takes me several times before I learn from it. But if I didn't make those mistakes, I wouldn't learn. And you're right. It has to go with every bit of life that we're going to make mistakes. And that's how we learn. And that's okay. Do you have a favorite thing about Venus that like someone is absolutely, disinterested, like, what is your favorite, like, boom. And then someone's like, holy smokes. Ah, wow. That's a really interesting question. You know, I think it's different for different people. And so my favorite thing is to talk to people about Venus because there are so many different ways you can surprise them. And say, and it's never going to be the same for all people. And thinking that you could fly across the surface is just mind-boggling. Just think that you could have two birthdays in one day. We'll blow some people's minds. There are so many amazing things that she tells us. And I think that's the fun. I feel like I know her so much better now. I feel like she's a friend. She is, she's a friend. She's a tease. She laughs a lot. You know, she is just, you know, she's having a lot of fun. And I want a great time up there. Yeah. I love this. I'll look for her in the sky. Yes. And she smiles down on you. Yeah. This has been amazing, Mickey. You are just a gem, an absolute gem. As are you. So ask planetary people and big US questions because that is how you learn and that is how you make friends. So thank you so much, Dr. Vicki Hansen, for spending your time with me to wax scientific about our new planet of obsession. I love Venus now. You can find out more about Vicki at the links in the show notes. And of course more links to studies and mission data and photos and books are on our website at alleyword.com slash allergies slash venousology. We are at allergies on blue sky on Instagram. I'm at alleyword alley has one L on both. Thank you again to patrons apologies for supporting the show for as little as $1 a month. Thanks to all those out there in allergies merch from allergiesmurch.com. So heads up. Smologies are shorter kid friendly versions of allergies episodes. They're in their own podcast feed. So just search for smologies smologies where you get your podcasts. Please do subscribe. Tell friends. Aaron Talbert admins the allergies podcast. Facebook group. Avaline Malik makes our professional transcripts Kelly are wired as the website. Noelle Dilworth works out our trajectories as scheduling producer. Mission captain is managing director Susan Hale. Big chafy stitches all our data together as editor and overseeing those pieces as lean editor Mercedes-Mateland of mateland audio Nick Thorburn made the theme music and if you stick around to the very very end you know I may tell you a secret this week. Secret number one the evening of January 15th, 2026 in LA. I'm co hosting like a drink and draw kind of community art and science event with your favorite squid expert Dr. Sarah Mackinolty and tickets are 15 bucks. I'll link them in the show notes but we only have about 30 tickets left. So you can get them while they are as hot as Venus rocks folks it'll sell out pretty quickly. Second secret is that I fully thought Venus was a gas planet until this conversation. I'm not a big planet person. I don't know as much as like a third grader but I knew gases were involved. I thought maybe the whole thing was gas and now I know so much more about Venus and now I care about Venus because I asked more questions so let that be a lesson to us all. So go forth into this dawn of 2026. Do things quickly, do them imperfectly, learn as you go. Things worth doing have to pass through these thick noxious clouds of fear and apprehension. No one is immune to them. Don't let fear waste your precious time on earth. Just go forth, do this stuff. Okay. Bye bye. You are beautiful Venus.