On November 9, 2005, at 06:33 Moscow time (03:33 UTC), the Soyuz-FG launch vehicle with the Venera Express interplanetary station successfully launched from the launch pad No. 31 of the Baikonur cosmodrome. For the first time in the past 15 years, a spacecraft to Venus was launched from Earth
Two of the seven scientific instruments on board were created with the participation of Russian scientists. With the help of the probe, which worked in the orbit of the "planet of love" until the end of 2007, scientists hoped to solve at least part of its mysteries, and possibly predict the future of the Earth and our civilization.
Secret number 1 Why people live on Earth and not on Venus
Our planet and the Morning Star, as Venus is sometimes called, are at first glance very similar in size and mass. They are the same age - about 4.5 billion years. There is an atmosphere. And, despite the fact that Venus is closer to the Sun by 40 million kilometers, the amount of heat coming from the sun to our planets is comparable. It seems that nothing prevented life from originating not only on Earth, but also on Venus. Indeed, according to one version, the oceans splashed there millions of years ago, But for some reason this did not happen. Now, thanks to the strong greenhouse effect, a hellish heat reigns on its surface - about 500 degrees Celsius. It's hotter here than on Mercury - the planet closest to the Sun!
Perhaps there was a highly developed civilization on Venus? And the same global catastrophe happened there, as now, according to some scientists, begins with us. Thanks to industrial emissions, substances accumulate in the atmosphere that let the sun's rays into the Earth, but prevent them from being reflected back into space. The process is irreversible, and every year the planet will be hotter. And as a result, all living things will perish? Why is the neighboring planet so affected by the greenhouse effect?
Secret # 2 It turns wrong
Venus rotates around its own axis in the opposite direction than other planets in our system. For a Venusian, the picture would be familiar that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. Astronomers joked that Venus, as the only planet with a female and [The first pictures of the surface of Venus were made by Soviet spacecraft in 1975. As it was said in the official TASS report, “despite the dense acidic atmosphere, it is quite light on the surface of the planet, like in a winter afternoon in Moscow …”].
The bike had the right to life, until it turned out that Uranus was rotating "in the wrong" direction. But why the planets behave this way, no one can really explain. Two main versions are a collision with a giant meteorite and some incomprehensible processes in the cores of planets.
Secret number 3 The day lasts longer than a year
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Another mystery is the too slow rotation of Venus around its axis and too fast around the Sun. It turned out that the Venusian day lasts 244 Earth days. But the Venusian year is only 224.7 Earth days. It turns out that a day on Venus lasts more than a year!
As with the greenhouse effect, there is speculation that the day on Venus was once noticeably shorter. But for some unknown reason, the planet's rotation slowed down. Perhaps this mystery is related to another phenomenon discovered already by the Venus-Express probe on its approach to the planet.
Secret # 4 Is it hollow?
The obtained images show this: a giant black funnel is located in the cloud cover over the South Pole of Venus - as if atmospheric vortices twist and go into the interior of the planet through some kind of hole. In other words, Venus is hollow. So does the Earth, which has holes at the poles. What is fascinatingly described in the fantastic works of "Plutonium" [On the medieval map of Mercator, the hole near the pole looks like the atmospheric funnels of Venus.] Vladimir Obruchev and "The Manuscript Found in a Bottle" by Edgar Poe. In addition, the photograph of the crater above the South Pole of Venus reminded many of the mysterious geographical maps of our planet, made by the Flemish cartographer of the 16th century Gerhard Mercator. Four streams of the World Ocean converge on them in the region of the North Pole, which then plunge into the abyss.
Of course, no one is seriously talking about the mysterious entrance to the dungeons of Venus. But the mysterious swirling vortices above the planet's pole are still unexplained.
Secret number 5 Is there still life on Venus?
Scientists are firmly convinced that on the surface, where the temperature is about 500 degrees of heat, and the pressure is 90 times higher than that of the earth, there are no living creatures. Unless, of course, we assume the existence of some organosilicon fire salamanders feeding on the hot lava of volcanoes. But life from an earthly point of view may well develop in the atmosphere of the planet, at an altitude of about 50 kilometers.
The temperature here is about 70 degrees Celsius, [People who are not versed in astronomy, the "planet of love" in the sky is often mistaken for a UFO.
Moon (larger), Venus (near the Moon).] The pressure is similar to that of the Earth, and even water vapor is present. At least, Doctor of Biological Sciences Alexei Topunov from the Institute of Biochemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences and American researchers Dirk Schultz-Makuch and Louis Irwin from the University of Texas believe this is quite likely.
Topunov cites microorganisms living almost in the vents of terrestrial underwater volcanoes as proof. And the Americans, having examined data from the Soviet satellites "Venus" and "Vega", discovered carbonyl sulfide in the planet's atmosphere. This gas is very difficult to produce inorganically, therefore it can be considered an indirect sign of the activity of bioorganisms. Also, the studies of Venus have shown that below 50 - 70 kilometers above the surface, the ultraviolet radiation of the Sun is almost imperceptible - as if the planet is surrounded by some kind of film that absorbs this part of the spectrum. Therefore, scientists made the assumption that microbes live at high altitudes, using ultraviolet light for some processes, like photosynthesis for terrestrial plants, and some microorganisms.