Every Hidden Thing On Venus Explained In 17 Minutes

Venus is the only planet in the solar system whose surface cannot be seen from space. It is wrapped in a permanent layer of cloud, roughly twelve to fifteen miles thick, made not of water but of concentrated sulfuric acid. This cloud deck reflects about three quarters of the sunlight that reaches it, which is why Venus shines so brightly in our sky, and why every telescope pointed at it for centuries saw nothing but a smooth, featureless, pale disk. For almost all of human history, the surface itself was a complete blank. Beneath the clouds, the conditions are extreme in every direction. The atmospheric pressure at the surface is about ninety-two times that of Earth, the equivalent of being nearly a kilometer deep in the ocean. The temperature holds at around 465 degrees Celsius, hot enough to melt lead, and it barely changes at all. Day or night, pole or equator, mountaintop or lowland, the heat stays almost constant. It is the product of a runaway greenhouse effect, driven by an atmosphere that is more than ninety-six percent carbon dioxide.