Exploring Venus 4K
The second planet from the sun, Venus, with its toxic overheated surface, has long been neglected by planetary mission planners. Lately, Earth’s sister planet has taken center stage in one of the greatest quests in science today: the search for life-bearing worlds beyond the solar system. That search has turned up over 4,000 planets, with thousands more waiting to be confirmed. There could be billions of planets the size of Earth and Venus spread across the galaxy. The quest for life-bearing worlds hinges on the questions: Why did Earth live, and why did Venus die?
The second planet from the sun, Venus, with its toxic overheated surface, has long been neglected by planetary mission planners. Lately, Earth’s sister planet has taken center stage in one of the greatest quests in science today: the search for life-bearing worlds beyond the solar system. That search has turned up over 4,000 planets, with thousands more waiting to be confirmed. There could be billions of planets the size of Earth and Venus spread across the galaxy. The quest for life-bearing worlds hinges on the questions: Why did Earth live, and why did Venus die?
More Episodes
Related Titles
.jpg?width=520&height=292&quality=75&jpg=true)
Related Articles
View All
Space Travel to the Moon, Mars, and Beyond: Often Romanticized, Seldom Understood
As we look ahead to NASA’s return to the Moon, it’s a good time to consider how far we’ve come. An earlier generation of rocket scientists made possible humankind's first giant…
Jupiter's Stormy Weather: Juno Reveals More Than the Eye Can See
The Juno probe has revealed Jupiter's majestic weather patterns in amazing detail. But are Jupiter's colors really that dynamic? It turns out, no. But just because these images…
Planet 9 Coming Into Focus (And Maybe Planet 10, Too!)
A Caltech team is on the hunt for hidden planets. Building on research first published in 2016, they amassed enough unsexy but compelling evidence to book time at the Subaru…
How We Learned the Night Sky is a Time Machine
Have you met Jim al-Khalili? (You’re about to.) He is a UK-based theoretical physicist and also a talented interpreter of technical science for people like us – sort of a…
Moon Work Was Hard Work: Apollo’s Astronauts Didn’t Have It Easy
Working on the Moon was no walk in the park for the Apollo astronauts. From bulky space suits to toxic space dust, the challenges were many. But the astronauts overcame the…
The Cost of Weightlessness: How Space Travel Can Affect the Human Body and Mind
While space travel seems out of this world, it comes with a cost. Each mission has physical and psychological effects on astronauts. As we try to push further into space, it’s…
The Very Long Odds of Life on Planet Earth
For Earth to foster life required many processes to happen in the right order and time. Had Earth formed elsewhere in our Solar System, it might not have been the beneficiary of…
Questioning the Mysteries of the Universe? Jim al-Khalili Might Have Your Answers
In documentaries exploring disorder in the universe, nothingness, and gravity, scientist Jim al-Khalili explains arcane and complex science topics to non-specialists. The joy and…