The idea of terraforming a planet has long been an idea routed in science fiction, but some strides are being made to show that it is possible. But instead of doing it on Mars, can we terraform Venus to make it a place we can live? Join us as we explore this line of thinking. Even if you know only a little bit about Venus, you know that it is a place that is near infinitely hot. It's a planet that has an event going on known as the "runaway greenhouse effect". Which means that various gasses created on the planet are getting trapped up in the atmosphere, and when that happens, the temperature of the planet starts to rise. First slowly, but then as more and more gasses propagate in the atmosphere, they grow even more. For Venus, this happened rapidly, and no one is really sure why:
“Something happened on Venus where a huge amount of gas was released into the atmosphere and couldn’t be re-absorbed by the rocks,” Scientist Michael Way said in a statement.
On Earth, and certain other planets, the gasses go up and down in a cycle, but when there is too much to be absorbed, like on Venus, that's when the greenhouse effect happens. The surface of Venus is now a scorching mess, and it's so hot that it could melt not just rock, but metal. So despite it being a place that is relative closer to us, even being called out "sister planet", it doesn't seem like a place that would be worth checking out, right? But despite everything going on with the planet, there are some positives.
On Mars, and the Moon, and even Titan, the gravity of the planet is MUCH less than Earths. So that means humanity (barring an artificial gravity system) would have to work the colony of those planets each and every day in order to stay fit and healthy.
But on Venus, because it's just a little smaller than Earth and has similar mass, the gravity is 9/10's of what Earth's is. Which means we'd only be a little lighter, which means our bones wouldn't deteriorate like they would in other places. Hence why many people think Venus is better because it's better suited for our bodies. So that's one pulse in its favor. What's more, there are some scientists who posit that somewhere on Venus there COULD be a place where we could live, and even have drinkable water:
“Venus currently has almost twice the solar radiation that we have at Earth, however, in all the scenarios we have modeled, we have found that [it] could still support surface temperatures amenable for liquid water,” Way said
That's a big if, and if we're being honest, that's assuming a lot with what's going on with the planet right now. We do know loosely what's going on with Venus, but we can only scan it from above because it's so hot that it would melt any probe, rover, satellite, or any other scanning or tracking device we would try and put it on the planet.
So let's be honest here, is there ANY way that terraforming COULD work on the planet Venus to make it livable? Technically...yes.
Terraforming (in the Non-Sci-Fi sense) is the act of introducing elements into an environment in order to make it better. For example, irrigation can be deemed a kind of terraforming because you're introducing water into a dry land in order to help things grow and thus not be dry anymore. But what we would want to do with Venus is something far beyond that.
Because before we could even touch the surface we would need to delve into the atmosphere and make that much better.
Before we describe how that could work, be sure to like the video and subscribe to the channel! That way you don't miss any of our weekly videos.
Believe it or not, messing with an atmosphere to try and manipulate it isn't as hard as you might think. After all, we've been doing it for years here on Earth. That's part of the reason why global warming is happening. The problem with Venus though is that this goes beyond basic manipulation. Venus for all intents and purposes is basically a gas planet. We can't just "see" the surface of Venus because of all the greenhouse gasses that are filling up the atmosphere. So before we touch the ground, we'd need to disperse all the negative gasses that are filling up the planet's atmosphere and surface, and that's not easy to do from a distance, nor with the time that we're trying to get this done.
For example, one famous scientist Carl Sagan promised the artificial creation of bacteria that would do a type of photosynthesis of sorts that would absorb the Carbon Dioxide that is mostly filling the atmosphere and pump out non-harmful gases like oxygen into the atmosphere. Thus making it a more suitable place. The problem here is that the bacteria on Venus would not have the same protections as here on Earth, and they would die quickly, and thus re-release all the Carbon Dioxide that they have.
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