What the Hell Happened to Venus?

931,288
0
Published 2023-11-11
Use code coolworlds at incogni.com/coolworlds to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan.

Venus resembles our Earth in so many ways, yet in many others it's frightningly different. Was Venus always this way? Could it have once been habitable? And if so, what went wrong? Why did Venus transform to the hellscape we see today? Let's explore the world next door...

Written & presented by Prof. David Kipping. Edited by Jorge Casas. Special thanks to Prof Stephen Kane for fact checking our script.

→ Support our research: www.coolworldslab.com/support
→ Get merch: teespring.com/stores/cool-wor...
→ Check out our podcast: youtube.com/@CoolWorldsPodcast

THANK-YOU to D. Smith, M. Sloan, L. Sanborn, C. Bottaccini, D. Daughaday, A. Jones, S. Brownlee, N. Kildal, Z. Star, E. West, T. Zajonc, C. Wolfred, L. Skov, G. Benson, A. De Vaal, M. Elliott, B. Daniluk, M. Forbes, S. Vystoropskyi, S. Lee, Z. Danielson, C. Fitzgerald, C. Souter, M. Gillette, T. Jeffcoat, J. Rockett, D. Murphree, T. Donkin, K. Myers, A. Schoen, K. Dabrowski, J. Black, R. Ramezankhani, J. Armstrong, K. Weber, S. Marks, L. Robinson, S. Roulier, B. Smith, J. Cassese, J. Kruger, S. Way, P. Finch, S. Applegate, L. Watson, E. Zahnle, N. Gebben, J. Bergman, E. Dessoi, C. Macdonald, M. Hedlund, P. Kaup, C. Hays, W. Evans, D. Bansal, J. Curtin, J. Sturm, RAND Corp., M. Donovan, N. Corwin, M. Mangione, K. Howard, L. Deacon, G. Metts, G. Genova, R. Provost, B. Sigurjonsson, G. Fullwood, B. Walford, J. Boyd, N. De Haan, J. Gillmer, R. Williams, E. Garland, A. Leishman, A. Phan Le, R. Lovely, M. Spoto, A. Steele, M. Varenka, K. Yarbrough, A. Cornejo, D. Compos, F. Demopoulos, G. Bylinsky, J. Werner, B. Pearson, S. Thayer, T. Edris, A. Harrison, B. Seeley, F. Blood, M. O'Brien, P. Muzyka, E. Loomans, D. Lee, J. Sargent, M. Czirr, F. Krotzer, I. Williams, J. Sattler, J. Smallbon, B. Reese, J. Yoder, O. Shabtay & X. Yao.

REFERENCES
► Weller, M. et al. 2023, "Venus’s atmospheric nitrogen explained by ancient plate tectonics", Nature Astronomy: www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-02102-w
► Truong, N. & Lunine, J. 2021, "Volcanically extruded phosphides as an abiotic source of Venusian phosphine", PNAS, 118, e2021689118: doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2021689118
► Greaves, J. et al. 2021, "Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of Venus", Nature Astronomy, 5, 655: arxiv.org/abs/2009.06593
► Way, M. et al. 2016, "Was Venus the First Habitable World of our Solar System?", Geophysical Research Letters, 43, 8376: arxiv.org/abs/1608.00706

MUSIC
Licensed by SoundStripe.com (SS) [shorturl.at/ptBHI], Artlist.io, via CC Attribution License (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) or with permission from the artist.
0:00 Hill - The Great Alchemist
3:58 Hill - Unhurried
5:31 Hill - World of Wonder
7:27 Chris Zabriskie - Music from Neptune Flux 04
8:40 Hill - A Slowly Lifting Fog
11:07 Falls - Life in Binary
15:38 Hill - Chasing out the Chaos
19:29 Chris Zabriskie - Cylinder Seven
23:28 Joachim Heinrich - Y

CHAPTERS
0:00 Not With 10,000 Men...
2:20 The Mysterious World
3:45 Communist Venus
5:34 Incogni
6:59 Venusian Volcanism
8:31 Resurfacing
10:15 92 Bars
12:24 The Outgassing Conundrum
13:41 Lost Oceans
15:30 Was Venus Habitable?
18:09 Venusian Life
21:54 Future Exploration
23:08 Endgame
24:45 Outro & Credits

#Venus #CoolWorlds

All Comments (21)
  • @jpaulc441
    If Venus and Mars tried harder at school we could have had 3 Earthlike planets. Imagine how much of an incentive space exploration would have if Venus or Mars had a rich biosphere with millions of alien plant and animal species to study, maybe even intelligent life? I once had a dream Venus was full of Koffing pokemon.
  • @suecondon1685
    Those yellow photos of Venus have stayed in my head ever since, so mysterious and haunting to think that we actually landed a craft there. Wow! Just a little update, when I said 'we' I meant the human race. I don't care which country landed it there, it's still a miracle and gives me goosebumps to see it.
  • @OmikronTitan
    127 minutes for Venera 13? That's a lot higher than I would have guessed. I'm surprised and impressed.
  • @IreneSalmakis
    This paints a nightmarish picture of a world whose plate tectonics ground to a halt prematurely. Maybe life continued as normal for a while, but then half a billion or so years later the magma pressure built up to such an intensity under the entire fused surface that it burst through the lid in a single catastrophic release. It's like that firework display where everything went off at once instead of in sequence. All the volcanic activity that would have happened slowly on Earth over billions of years all happened at the same time, leaving a charred, dead, blown-out world with nary a shred of evidence that it had ever been otherwise.
  • @PokerIsLife13
    I never even thought about this but… imagine a solar system like ours but with life on TWO planets simultaneously evolving separately from eachother. Imagine looking at mars satalites for the first time and see animals and trees. Wow
  • @alexsiemers7898
    It’s interesting to hear the depiction of Venus being a tormented planet instead of an evil twin to earth, a place that simply couldn’t control its own fate rather than actively trying to be hostile
  • @pryordvm
    When you said "we're incredibly lucky to have a planet like Venus so close by," and gestured off-screen, I half expected you to be like "And here she is, right here in the studio!" Anyway, love your videos, love your energy. Keep it up dude 👍
  • @owenpancoast1163
    Venus could have an entire fossil record of life that evolved independently from Earth that could’ve been destroyed during Venus’s runaway greenhouse effect. If that’s the case that’s such a tragedy for science, imagine what could’ve walked the surface of Venus.
  • @igortumbas2769
    I had the pleasure of visiting Parkes observatory in New South Wales, Australia. There was an astronomy enthusiast event at the time of our visit. It was a sunny, clear day and one of the enthusiasts pointed out Venus, shining bright in broad daylight. I ended up observing it through a telescope and was stricken by the sight of this amazing planet.
  • @SpecialGoat
    Soviet explorer be like: Finally, warm water port
  • @jus10lewissr
    I've often pondered what it would be like if Venus, Earth and Mars had all developed life and were each still thriving. Unfortunately, if there were lifeforms that developed anything like we did and were equally as intelligent and advanced as we are, we'd surely be at war with at least one of the two planets because that's just what we do. And yes, I'm fully aware of how unrealistic that is but, technically, it's not entirely impossible. Of course, when I get to thinking about that kind of stuff, I like to wonder what it would be like if Venus, for example, was still in the condition to support life and had also developed dinosaurs (but not humans) somehow and hadn't experienced an extinction level event, therefore leaving these hypothetical "dinosaurs" to continue to exist there to this day. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty unrealistic as well for so many reasons, but again, not entirely impossible. I honestly find these types of things pretty interesting to think about, personally, and even somewhat fun to imagine literally countless scenarios, realistic or not. Somewhere out there, though, there may very well be a solar system with multiple planets that each developed life in very different ways and the thought of actually seeing that is exciting, even though I'm fully aware that it's not something that I will actually ever get to experience.
  • @philochristos
    It would be interesting if there were a time in the past when Venus, Earth, and Mars all had water oceans at the same time.
  • @Monarchmongoose
    Quoting Boromir to explain the severity of Venus. It’s because of things like this you are amongst my favourite YouTubers. And my absolute favourite person on the platform. Skill, knowledge, in-depth research. passion, emotion and a true love for what you do. You’re a diamond amongst the rough ❤
  • @miriamg495
    Is it possible that the key difference between Venus and Earth is that Earth happened to evolve not just photosynthetic life, but also life forms that create calcium carbonate (limestone), and Venus didn't? I'm not talking about the Gaia hypothesis per se, just the idea that Earth got lucky: the life which evolved on it happened to stabilize its temperature as the sun got brighter. Relatedly, it would be really cool if you could do a video on the silicate-carbonate cycle sometime. On Earth, there's about 10,000 times as much carbon locked up in limestone and other sedimentary rocks as there is in fossil fuels, and about 100,000 times as much in sedimentary rocks as in the atmosphere. My guess is that no planet around a sun-like star could remain habitable over the long term without a functioning silicate-carbonate cycle, but I'd love to hear your take on it!
  • @M0U53B41T
    Venus is so amazing. I know we've been very centered on Mars, but there's so much we can learn from Venus. Every planet we investigate will give us that much more of an edge at deciphering exoplanets.
  • @rocinante4609
    The more we study planets like Venus and exoplanets the more it becomes evident how unique the Earth truly is. The Earth too has gone through periods of extreme volcanic activity and yet natural processes on Earth has rebalanced itself to create a happy medium where life continues to flourish. Mars and Venus are also constant reminders of the Earth's fragility and the precariousness of our own existence. As always a beautiful and thought provoking video!
  • @HameleoshaDeHoga
    This sent chills down my spine I'm not even joking No matter how hard I try to familiarize myself with space, it still terrifies me sometimes...
  • @JeffDrennen
    Remember, next time you look up at the night sky and see Venus. It's the closest you'll ever be to another planet in your whole entire life.