The Future of Venus Exploration
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- Опубліковано 18 чер 2024
- Dr Michael Way explains how we can explore Venus, study its atmosphere and understand what hides underneath. It's also a crucial part of astrobiology and studying exoplanets.
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00:00 Intro
01:32 Venus. Earth gone wrong
04:20 Exploring Venus with future missions
23:23 Surviving on Venus for longer
28:22 Pushing the limits with Venus
34:20 Venus as an exoplanet
37:25 Outro
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You are free to use my work for any purpose you like, just mention me as the source and link back to this video. - Наука та технологія
Yay! I got to collaborate with Dr. Way on an article at work about how ancient volcanism on Venus may have influenced its present climate - I'm so glad to see him here, getting to chat with you about our wonderful sister planet, Fraser 😃
We need a manned mission to venus, not to mars.
Careful! watch the background. Michael Way is a reptilian shape shifter.
He just wants to secure funds to go back home.
@@21stcenturyscots lol to kill the astronauts?
@@richuniverse1060 Apollo 13 was long ago. We need more excitement and suspense in Astronautism.
Military personel signed up to follow orders. So we do not need any volunteers.
Yay! A Fraser Cain video; my favorite!
Fraser, you have the best job on the planet. That Q&A last week where you talked about how you don't "prep for interviews" because your career is basically prepping for these interviews made me so jealous. This interview reminded me of that. Cheers!
For me its the most interesting interview on this channel so far!
Great video!
Thank you for covering this.
My son (turns 6 next month) and I was reading a new book about the our solar system and planets at bedtime, and he was intrigued by Venus and had many many questions I did not even know how respond to, but this has helped me be able to address them tomorrow.
He’s gotten to where he will watch nearly every video on UA-cam that covers any and every thing to do with space.
We enjoy watching your videos together!
Where should nominations for "dad of the year" be submitted? You did something very right!
@@ilessthan3bees well thank you. We are going to sit down and watch some more in a few, but now we have to walk the neighborhood to sell chocolate bars for his school fundraiser. Lol
I’m tired too...
I am sitting here totally absorbed in this interview. So lost in new thoughts and ideas. This is with our a doubt the best time I have spent being educated. Thank you all for your work.
Thank you for a fascinating interview about a planet that has been ignored for a few years.
Thank you Dr. Way, you are so well spoken and respectful, and you have your head on your shoulders. I wish I could come work with you.
And Fraser you are a great listener, you a a great critical thinker, you ask good questions, and you are supportive.
Thank you to Dr Michal Way. I always thought that we knew so much more about Venus. Interesting how a better understanding of Venus will help us with new discoveries of exoplanets.
Prof. Ralph Lorenz who built and piloted Huygens wrote Titan Unveiled. He is at John Hopkins Uni if you need him for comments when the Venus landing occurs.
Very interesting interview. I'm really excited about future Venus missions, seems like there is so much we could learn there.
very cool thanks for the video :)
Fantastic. The interviews are always great!
Bravo! Excellent interview. Thank you.
Great interview Fraser, Great host, very clear and interesting to listen to, would love to hear more from him/Venus in future.
Great interview! Sounds like really exciting ideas, and some of them actually doable :)
That was absolutely fascinating!
Dude! Awesome info! I love the idea of exploring Venus! Also I just noticed that you published with a CC by 4.0 which is very generous. Thank you for contributing your videos and being willing to have others share and use them too.
Really good interview there are so many space missions planned its overwhelming
Such a cool, easy going interview. Thank you all.
Great interview!
Thanks for your videos Fraser. I’ve been watching for years
My pleasure!
That was great. I'm glad to see that we are going back to Venus and really enjoyed the interview.
Great interview! Thanks
really great interview
What I think needs to be done with Venus, is missions that deploy air ships of some design to float around Venus watching and getting data on Venus from the upper atmosphere. Diving down to the surface seems to be a very limited mission, no matter what you do. Airships could last for years maybe a decade?
One of your finer interviews Fraser.
I would not say Venus has gone terribly wrong; what has gone wrong is that astrophysicists forgot about atmospheres when defining habitable zones.
Good stuff!
very nice interview :)
Great vid 👍👍👍
You introduced Dr. Way as someone who specializes in atmospheres, and the first thing he talks about is a subduction zone in the crust of the planet 😅
Thanks 👍!
Yeah it's definitely weird how little we know, or have paid attention to Venus. I figure Mars gets all the attention because with what we know now it seems like the better/easier option to explore or colonize since it doesn't have the same issues of insane heat or pressure. I still would think there would ( or should ) have been at least a few more missions to study it's atmosphere and scans of the surface, like Mars Observer and it's ilk.
Much love y’all
It sounded like Dr Way didn't know what Mr Cain was talking about when he mentioned clockwork but he covered up nicely.
I feel like the Fermi Paradox problem comes down to the magnetosphere, because that's what Mars and Venus lack compared to Earth.
And part of what keeps the mantle flowing to create that magnetic field is thanks to the formation of our moon, a very rare event...
@@petevenuti7355 I'm pretty sure the mantle flows at time scales much slower than what would be needed, and it's silicate rock which is not conductive.
It's the liquid iron-nickle (outer) core that generates the magnetic field.
The impact that created the moon reduced Earth's mantle and crust material and may have added to the core.
@@JohnDlugosz yuppers, increase in iron to silica ratio due to impact, combined with tidal heating.
Oh , and impact likely thinned the atmosphere preventing a Venus like scenario.
It’s the place to go man!
There are actually some exciting missions visiting Venus specifically within a few years to ten years. Even a heat and acid resistant lander is planned for use that can last 1-2 months on the surface of Venus within a couple decades.
Venus is fascinating because its a true rocky hellscape with plenty of chemical reactions going on.
They're going to need something like a bathascape to house the electronics in with dedicated heavy duty cooling, and I'm wondering if the individual sensors could be housed in the own separate support shell that could communicate back to the main lander or make each sensor suite a separate unit with reaction wheels for mobility and have them communicate with something in orbit like Mars surveyor
Hi Fraser! Fascinating interview!
Unrelated: Have you considered adding your Mastodon presence to your list of "Other Social Media" in the show notes?
One of the interesting differences between Earth and Venus that I have pondered is how both had a massive impact in their past that had drastically different outcomes on them. Earth's impact crested our moon, increased Earth's density, and potentially spun up our core. Venus' started it spinning backwards or knocked it head over heels. Is this the cause of one of their other differences? Earth's strong magnetic field and Venus' lack of anything meaningful. If so, it really makes you think about how important the impact that made the moon was to life on Earth.
its believed that Theia's metal core remained in Earth and that the Moon is mostly crust, and that this had a huge effect on our magnetic field
@@mycosys it is also thought to have been a glancing blow which kicked a plume of earth up into orbit. It almost seems like Venus got hit opposite its rotation and more directly, leading to its slow rotation
Yay. Fraser got to interview Lex Luthor. Lol awesome interview, by the way.
The crux to enabling surface missions on Venus is finding a viable energy source for active cooling. Both the pressure and the temperature can be isolated against with existing tech. We have materials capable of handling thousands of degrees (while keeping most of their tensile strength) while white hot nut just measly hundreds of degrees and barely red hot.
Venus' real problem? It receives *87%* more solar radiation than Earth (by the inverse square law: 1 ÷ 0.73 × 0.73) Even when our Sun was young Venus received *31%* more solar radiation than Earth does today (70% × 1.87).
I’m still kinda sad they chose 2 Venus missions over the TRIDENT mission, we really need to visit that ice giant again 😔😔😔
A lot easier to send a SpaceX starship into deep space loaded with dozens of satellites and observation equipment and use the Starship itself as the deep space communications relay for all the local satellite missions.
@@KGTiberius holy hell that’s a dream mission! Perhaps it’s got a few larger probes on board, around the same size as TRIDENT, maybe a titan lander, and a bunch of cubesats that will go visit deep space comets and dwarf planets (Eris, chariklo, haumea, etc,)
Fraser ❤ Venus
What's the most challenging aspect of a designing a Venus lander? I'm guessing it's not actually the pressure: we have deep sea robots that operate at far greater pressures ( a depth of 1000m is about the same Venus's surface. We have probes that regularly operate at 4000m or more). Is it the acidity, the temperature, no way to power the probe? Why is Venus so challenging?
For short term exploration ala the Venera Landers, temperature. The temperature heats up the internals of a probe get cooked by the temperature.
Longer Term, probably power. Most of our ways of producing power rely on heat differential which on Venus you have to get to a ridiculous temperature for our current earth-based power generation. Wind turbines still work though. And there are RTG's that have a cold side around 450*c and a hot side of 1200*C which means it would work on Venus.
Great interview, but was hoping to hear you talk more about analog computers and clockwork rovers! Maybe a topic for a future interview? There's gotta be a professor of automata somewhere :D
I just completed the exact interview you want to hear, so hang tough a few days.
The feature behind the guest's head to the right looks like a brain scan. You can even kind see eyes, nose, chin, and neck of a head side on.
Whoop whoop!
I was glad to hear he mentioned some kind of balloon at 17:30 because that had been on my mind. It would be a way to pursue longer times to research those 'horizontal' layers Dr. Way was talking about. I know that the melting point is a serious concern, but don't know if there is an alloy of something like tungsten that would not only be able to keep up with the temperature (tungsten has a very high melting point) but also with the pressure. Tungsten by itself is brittle. Is there a way to integrate a piezoelectric effect into some kind of casing using high temp ceramics with metals that would supply power to things like cooling and computer systems? Somehow the more temp and pressure that was applied, the more power would be generated? I am a layperson, but just spitballing ideas. I hate no-win scenarios and would like to see a way to turn the challenges into advantages. Good interview.
There are plenty of metals that can handle the temperatures. but - Magnets lose their magnetism, silicon loses its dopants and stops being a semiconductor, the metals we use for solder melt. Its not a a problem for a thing just existing, but its incredibly hostile for pretty much every part of electromechanical systems remaining electromechanical systems.
Piezoelectric effect doesn't produce continuos power with increasing pressure.
Balloons could be made of conventional materials and float at an altitude that is benign.
No need to use exotic materials except maybe for probes tethered to the balloons by very long filaments.
The record for solid state electronics operating temperature is somewhere around 500° C. That is for one of the wide bandgap technologies.
Venus is exciting due to having a fantastic amount of energy available everywhere. Unfortunately, that energy is heat. It can only be extracted by providing some place for that energy to go... We'd need high-temperature solar panels to power the heat pumps! The long-lived balloon would be much easier. It could operate in sane pressure levels and temperatures. With adequate preparation and shielding, they might even be manned someday.
How about you do a video about the dwarf planets
I find myself wondering if infrared photovoltaics might be more practical in n 800K environment than solar power? Wouldnt there be a hell of a lot of ambient IR?
I can also imagine powering motors with a 'source of cool' rather than heat - most power cycles work by moving heat energy form a high heat area to a low heat one - cryogenic tanks/evaporative/sublimative/ablative systems could both cool the vehicle and provide a source of power. Such a fascinating operating regime
I imagine a good testing ground for such tech would be volcanic fissures at the ocean's abyssal plains.
My first thought was: What if almost all planets in the "goldilocks zone" are more like Venus than Mars or Earth? Or perhaps: What if, without life, planets end up like either Venus or Mars? So man heads for another star system with lots of "Earth like" planets. They get there fully prepared for something like Mars but find a venus or three instead. Beautiful to see but Hell on the surface. (course Mars is not that much better, just doable in the short term) Of the two, which would be easier to use as a starting point for teraforming? I am sure either way, it would take 100s (at least) of years. I would also guess that by the time we send someone, anyone on the ship will be used to living on a space habitat, not just because they travel in one but because those interested in going will already have lived in a space habitat for generations. So maybe it doesn't matter. Perhaps the fastest way to teraform a planet is to inject the greatest variety life into it we can and let them deal with it. Sorry for the brain vomit.
Hi Fraser. Could planets in the habital zone of red dwarf stars be tidally locked in a 3:2 resonance like mercury? Thoughts on finding life there?
Hi Fraser, do we have any data on affect on atmosphere due to burning up of the satellites? Satellite do have pollutants and hazardous materials does it have any impact?
Hello Mr Cain what are LaGrange points?
At first I was annoyed by the poor audio quality, but by the end of the video it felt "atmospheric".
I honestly feel that Venus does possess phosphine in it's upper clouds where it is a comfy 80 degrees with similar atmospheric pressure of Earth. I also think there is simple bacteria floating in that band of the atmosphere that has evolved to be highly resistant to the acid there.
Give this lady some funding
What about landing at the north or south pole of Venus? What's the temperature there?
I’m curious: Is the eagerness to explain a common characteristic of scientists?
Acrylic deep see ball tossed from a balloon (terminal velocity is low?) With self orienting motion robot/camera platform safe inside?
Play the entire Wolfenstein series, it all makes sense now.
The Wow Signal: Are there any stars in the direction it came from that are lined up so the earth would transit the sun from their position? Even more interesting would be if it the signal were timed so the earth was transiting at that very moment.
Is developing an active cooling system for a lander impossible with current technology? Or is it just so hard that other approaches seem more practical? It would be the obvious solution if it was practical.
A crazy speculative hypotheses: About 2b years ago, engineers moved a largish planet out of solar orbit and put it in orbit about Terra, to strip off most of the atmosphere. Which is why we aren't Venus. And why we have such a ridiculously large "moon" very close to the Roche limit. And it explains the Maria - those were the ablative regions used to move the planet. Now this has a liklihood approaching zero, but it's just KSP on a planetary level. All in jest,, but fun.nevertheless.
You don't need a feather duster, and get blimps galore. Cities in the sky!
Venus should be seeded with something in the upper atmosphere to reduce the energy getting to Venus, cooling Venus should be the main objective.
Cloud cities!
I'm Batman! He got some michael keaton look going on there
We're teenagers and get to practice on Venus 😁
Guy looks like max headroom! =)
Did it get hit by a flare?
I have a thought experiment about our solar system. What if we were to take a snapshot of our solar system with all the planets and then remove all of their orbital velocities (so just suspended in space with no speed). At what rate would the planets fall into the sun just by gravitational forces. The force of gravity between the sun and Jupiter is an order of magnitude greater than earths. How would this scenario play out? (Or do I have the math all wrong?)
Correct; you have the math all wrong.
It's not the total resultant 'force', it's the acceleration between two masses and inversly proportional to the square of seperation. In the case of the Sun it is by far the most massive component, you can just calculate the acceleration at any distance from it. Then Newton's Laws of Motion will give you the time to 'fall' into the Sun.
@@bikerfirefarter7280 Thanks. You are correct! The mass in F=MA and Newtons gravity equation have a canceling effect. I have calculated the acceleration at Jupiter’s distance from the sun but the actual time formula seems to be a calculus problem as the acceleration changes as you get closer (rate of change). It’s been about
40 years since my calculus days. I’ll keep plugging away though. Cheers! Gotta keep this old noggin active in retirement.
@@scottbringloe6408 you can approximate it using a spreadsheet and sum the times for a fixed series of constant (but incrementally increased) accelerations over a number of distances. Pretty much integral calculus stylie, but not an infinitesimal series. Close enough for the sake of trivial curiosity. ;-)
Venus was not made locally according to retrograde. Progrades are formed in debris discs, and turn the natural way.
Retrogrades are caught, but no one says this of Venus.
According to tidal locking, Venus is a moon of the Sun, not a planet.
Does the "habitable zone" take into account the atmospheric pressure and composition? At ninety atmospheres water boils around 300C. At any particular distance, the greenhouse effect will keep a Vinus like planet much warmer than an Earth like planet. There are many other possible combinations of pressure and composition that would each have different habitable zones.
Basically my point is that talking about a single habitable zone with no reference to the atmosphere seems like an extreme simplification.
No, the habitable zone just means that it's possible for liquid water to be present.
@@frasercain but the atmospheric conditions affect the temperature i.e. distance that liquid water can exist. If there is no atmosphere, there is no distance where liquid water can exist. With an Earth like atmosphere, there is one range of distances that liquid water can exist. With a Venus like atmosphere, there is a different range of distances where liquid water can exist. These ranges will be significantly different.
Yes, of course. The habitable zone doesn't indicates where liquid water is present, only places where liquid water *could* be present. It's a starting point.
@@frasercain without specifying the conditions, it is not possible to specify the distance range where water can be liquid. The pressure changes the boiling point of water by a lot. The atmospheric conditions determine how much light is trapped as heat. I am pretty sure that there is some depth in Jupiter's atmosphere where liquid water can exist. Even so, it not considered to be in the habitable zone. Thus there must be some unstated range of conditions used when computing the habitable zone. Ultimately my question boils down to what those assumptions are.
There are no assumptions. There's a distance from a star where water would boil and a distance where it freezes. In between that region is the habitable zone. Astronomers are well aware that the mass of the planet, composition of the atmosphere, size of any moons, lack of magnetosphere, etc will all affect the actual habitability of a planet.
They're not saying that the planet is actually habitable, just that liquid water could be present.
Venus did get sone high quality observations fom non-dedicated missions (ie SDO, Hinode, TRACE, etc) in 2004 and 2012 wheb the two Venus transits happened. In alot of those observations Venus (and the Sun) was taken as an analouge for exo-solar planets orbiting their parent stars. True SCO, TRACE and Hinode are not meant to subistute for a real Venus mission.
Hi Fraser! I just had this crazy idea while listening to this interview and I wonder what you think. Please remember that it is a crazy idea, so try not to laugh yo hard 😅
Most experts agree that the Moon was formed after a collision between ancient Earth and Thea. What if ancient Earth was so big that the collision with Thea formed not even the Moon but even formed Venus?
That would help explain weird things about Venus, like it's atmosphere, temperature, rotation and so on.
I know it sounds taken from sci-fi, but I warned you, it was a crazy idea! 😆
Thanks for all your work Fraser, you're amazing!
No. The orbital velocities rule that Earth/Venus idea out.
@@bikerfirefarter7280 Interesting. Thanks for the answer, always nice to learn something new :)
@@joaofigueiredo7509 If you check the orbital velocities of Earth and Venus, and look at the difference, you can work out the energy involved. It's huge. Also you'd need to figure out what would circularise both orbits after such a collision. Or how eccentric the original bodies orbits were before collision. The orbits are just too conveniently resonant to have been caused by something like a late-formation Thea/proto-Earth collision. An isolated event powerful enough to totally disrupt two already formed large bodies that would then distribute and recoallese into Earth/Moon and Venus in those resonant orbits just doesn't work out.
@@bikerfirefarter7280 well, I'm obviously very unknowing in this, so maybe that helps explain my thoughts. Just for curiosity and for further fantasising, does anyone ever worked out what the actual Earth and Venus would be like if both planets would be the outcome of a collision between an early Earth and Thea? Once again, just for fun 😊 would be very awesome to read that paper.
@@joaofigueiredo7509 Yes. You'll have to dig about a bit, but many varieties of collisions have been calculated, its part of the process to try reasonable starting conditions and also extend those to extremes. Reasonable calculations and systematic examples will have been tried (hence the earth/thea/moon projections). Yours will have been covered.
Whenever I hear someone say the nearest Star is at least 1000 years away I wait to hear an estimate of how long that would be for the traveler going whatever percentage of the speed of light would make that distance a thousand years our time. Nobody seems to work this out? would that be less than a lifetime? I think about early explorers and how their lifespan was less and their mode of travel so primitive. They were spending major percentages of their lives on a slow boat going over there.
Patricia - Proxima Centauri is 1000+ years away using our currently available means of propulsion. It would take ~40 years at 10% light speed. You might want to look at Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur Outward Bound & Interstellar Colonization series (multiple videos) - He’s an Astrophysicist who’s worked out a lot of those details…
You can easily find equations or a graph of how speed affects time dilation. The time dilation effect doesn't become noticeable until you get to 60% of light speed or so.
Taking a thousand years to travel 4 light years would be 1/250th of light speed. Time dilation won't make any difference to the subjective transit time.
@@JohnDlugosz Thank you, My perspective is better now.
How can Venus have no magnetic bore yet it’s retaining a thick atmosphere that’s not been washed away by solar wind?
????? Hi Fraiser. Mars atmosphere has been stripped by the solar wind due to the lack of a magnetic field. Why hasn't Venus suffered the same fate considering it's lack of a magnetic field and (due to proximity)exposure to a stronger solar wind?
Carbon dioxide is a heavier molecule than say molecular nitrogen or oxygen like in our atmosphere.
CO₂ needs to be hit harder to knock it out into space.
I think they make ice in the deserts using passive cooling.
Totally different thing.
Why couldn't they use the same material they built that probe that quote "touched the Sun" and is currently orbiting the Sun and continues to get really really close to the sun, then backs off to cool down... I can't think of the name of it, maybe it's called The Parker probe or something I don't know that's right but why wouldn't they be able to use something like that if they were able to get that close to the damn sun then Venus should not be a huge thing to tackle
Parker Solar Probe is in space, so it can use radiators to get rid of the heat. It also spends the minimum possible time near the Sun before getting away again. A Venus probe would be immersed in that hot atmosphere and have no way to vent its heat.
How come no spin? Not tidally locked... everything else spins.
Is it possible that Venus was a lava planet for billions of years and that's why its surface is so young?
Moreover, can we even be sure Venus is as old as the other planets? Maybe Venus formed only 500 million years ago, from the collision of two smaller planets?
They aren't bumper to bumper on Mars yet at least.
I wish the US would spend more on NASA rather than being world police
If you explore inside your oven, you might find a burned pot roast.
One one of my screens I'm whittling away at an image generated by Midjourney AI trying to get it to be more believably realistic. On the other I'm watching a Fraser Cain interview, and the interviewee's real time green screen clipping keeps absolutely making him look AI generated. Pretty soon we won't be able to tell, with this sort of thing as precedent.
It won't be much longer. I was thinking of trying to run one question through Control Net on Stable Diffusion to make me look like I'm in an anime scifi setting.
You two look like brothers.
Evaporative cooling should work even on Venus (use a venturi cycle refrigerator with an expansion valve and a higher temp working fluid), high winds could even be harnessed to make is more efficient. Somewhat like Andy Weir's - The Martian, landing an 'icehouse' on Venus should be a priority.. then it could have extensible hook ups to port some kind of 'working fluid' to charge Up, or charge Down say a rover so that its electronics could keep cool... rove about and then return for cool down Charge. Energy would drive it, so radio isotopes (RTGs) would probably be best.. until we understand better about the environment to say use Photovoltaics.
Pretty cool. #2pac 2023
He never answered the question about how they can be so certain about exoplanets from outside the solar system..
We can never really be certain about exoplanets. It's so hard to even learn about Venus, so exoplanets will always have minimal evidence.
Before going on with watching the video myself, I was going to mention that Venus seems like a planet with more potential than what people might think; more can be done to the landscape and atmosphere than what most people might know.
..if Venus has no magnetic field, how has it retained its atmosphere?...why is it not just a larger version of mars?..
Mars' gravity is 1/3 as much.
Maybe Venus' atmosphere _has_ eroded a measurable amount.
@@JohnDlugosz it does get eroded. Venus' atmosphere expands sometimes and forms a tail of gas. They talk a bunch about Venus losing its atmosphere. Specifically, that is where all its water went after sunlight dissociated it into H2 and O2.
In terms of mass, size, and gravity Venus is much more similar to Earth than it is to Mars. While the gravity of Mars is only 1/3 of Earth’s the gravity of Venus is 91% of Earth’s. Unlike Mars its gravity is sufficient enough so it can hold onto a substantial atmosphere despite the lack of a magnetic field.
It have a magnetic field but is only 10%of that of earth, why? Are many reasons, like its slow rotation, but actually that magnetic field is enough to retain its atmosphere, and also interaction between solar wind and a planetary atmosphere generate a magnetic field(that can shied the atmosphere from stripping effects of solar wind) , but Mars for example loses its atmosphere because don't have a very active vulcanic activity and no source for replacing the gasses that are stripped by solar wind, actually venus have too much atmosphere and should loose some to become more habitable.
venus is a zombie planet, it was hit with something large that hurt it so badly it became hellscape incarnate, habitable zone or not.