Oh, Venus

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Barry Petchesky @barry 5h
I will never miss a chance to bring up that there are photos of the surface of Venus, taken by the Russians in the two hours before the lander freaking melted

Link to tweet

[StClone]

1. You did hear that the Russian wanted to land on the Sun?

When told by American Scientist their craft would surely burn up upon the attempt, they replied:

"You stupid Americans! We will be landing at night!"

[oasis]

3. lol

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4. they needed to planet better

...

[soothsayer]

2. Very cool

Er, hot! The sounds though. Wow!

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11. 'This is Mars. Turn up the volume.'

...from Curiosity, not Perserverance.

[soothsayer]

12. I hope they'll send more sound when we hear less of perseverance (tho that's cool too)

Looks right muddy.

[misanthrope]

5. Best pray that isn't future Earth

I believe Sagan's PhD dissertation was based on the hypothesis that Venus was created by a runaway greenhouse effect.

[StClone]

6. Naw. It will be more like Texas.

Hurricanes, freeze-outs, droughts, locusts, plagues a real vacation spot of the Solar System.

[qazplm135]

7. I mean in about a billion years

probably yes, it WILL be future Earth. Oceans boiled away, runaway greenhouse is inevitable at that point.

So we are seeing a preview of our inevitable future, just a long, long time from now.

[misanthrope]

8. Well, you're talking about solar lifestages

Sagan was talking about something different.

[qazplm135]

9. Sagan was talking about

climate change, but he also said we could end up cooling our planet and looking like Mars so his argument was more of a general hey look at the these two planets and be careful, but the reality is that while I hardly think even the worst human driven climate change could mirror either one of these planets (for one we'd kill ourselves off (or at least civilization) way before we got there), eventually our planet is going to look like Venus.

Speaks to me about the need not just to deal with climate change, which is obviously a real threat to civilizations and to flora and fauna alike, but also space exploration and eventually colonization. Obviously, the former is a way more immediate threat and focus than the latter, but all it takes is one asteroid, and our egg basket is scrambled.

[misanthrope]

10. Yes, one big rock and it's bye-bye

We don't have to worry about Mars' fate, precisely, unless our core is going to suddenly seize so we lose our magnetosphere.

[Kid Berwyn]

13. Don P. Mitchell has done great work...

http://mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm



That image, at left above and top right in OP, shows what’s past the immediate Venusian neighborhood.

Truly amazing imagery, considering the atmosphere is 100 times thicker than earth’s and it’s about 880 degrees in the shade, if there were any.

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14. fascinating

...how those images were created and recovered.