Venus
Venus is the great and wonderful goddess of heterosexual love the second closest planet to the Sun in the Solar System, and is almost the same size (being slightly smaller) as its more easy-going (climate-wise) neighbor, Earth.
To the naked eye, it looks like a bright star and often is the third brightest object in the sky after the sun and moon—though recently it jostles for that position with the International Space Station[1]. The thing is, while it and the latter can be seen during twilight, they can't be seen during most of the night, hence Jupiter remains the brightest nighttime planet.
Because it's closer to the sun than the Earth is, it's never more than 45 degrees away from the sun when viewed from the Earth. It can be seen during full daylight, if it's near the point of maximum brightness in its orbit and you know exactly where to look. Because it is easily noticeable around sunrise and sunset, many cultures have called it "morning star" — the Bible might refer to it when it refers to "Lucifer, Star of the Morning", because Lucifer brings forth light — and "evening star."
On Venus there is only one morning/evening star, Mercury, while Earth is several time brighter in the Venusian sky than Mars.
A lot of people who rarely look up, have Daylight Savings Time, or live in severely light-polluted areas have no idea how bright Venus can be, so it is often misidentified as an UFO (or a big 'ol jet plane taking a long long time to land).
The proper adjectival form of "Venus" is "Venereal". However, people turn liguistic handsprings to avoid using that, for some reason, and use Venus’, or, Invisible Pink Unicorn protect us, Venusian or Venitian.
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[edit] Not a place you want to live
Venus is often described as a "hell hole"; it's said to be worse than Detroit, Baghdad, North Korea, and a high school bathroom combined. Its average surface pressure is about 90 times that of Earth, and its average surface temperature is in the region of 740 K (467°C, 872°F). The atmosphere is almost pure carbon dioxide, with clouds composed of sulphur dioxide and droplets of sulphuric acid. On the other hand, if you aren't crushed or burned to a crisp, you can fly/swim in the Venusian air, and the future might have humans living in balloon colonies in the upper atmosphere.
[edit] Global warming gone amok
Venus is hotter than Mercury, despite being farther away from the Sun. This is due to the greenhouse effect- in fact, the side of Mercury facing away from the Sun actually gets cold because the planet's thin atmosphere is unable to retain radiated heat; in contrast, Venus's greenhouse gases keep much of the heat in, which is part of the reason why Venus is hotter.
[edit] Nutty claims
Before we discovered that its surface conditions can fry a rugged Russian probe in a little over two hours,[2] Venus was a fashionable place for UFOs and aliens to come from; lush jungles and a population consisting principally of lascivious scantily-clad women[3] made it the scene to make for people in contact with aliens. This is mainly because Venus looks like a big white blob, and it's difficult to see much below the cloud layer with an ordinary telescope.[4] George Adamski claimed that he was in contact with Venusians and even went to Venus with their spaceships. It's unclear how he survived the acid rain. Probably had a good umbrella. Nowadays, such Venusians live at a higher vibration to avoid the heat, a bit like Australians.
Velikovsky claimed that Venus was spat out of Jupiter, followed a ridiculously complicated path around the Solar system -- which, thanks to a couple of close encounters with Earth, caused the infamous sun-standing-still-in-the-sky episode from Joshua 10:13 -- and then settled into its current almost-perfectly-circular orbit.
It is also common scientific knowledge that human females are originally from Venus, which is why they spit sulphuric acid when you cross them.[5]
[edit] One Pair of Eyes
In 1969, Patrick Moore made a one-off special for the BBC, called One Pair of Eyes, featuring what Moore called "independent thinkers". These included a man from the Aetherius Society who claimed to be able to speak Venusian.
[edit] Notable Venusians
Omnec Onec came from Venus in the 1950s. She survived the harsh conditions there by existing in the 5th Dimension, in which Venus is a lush paradise with crystal cities.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Venera: The Soviet Exploration of Venus, a fun page with lots of pictures. The bloody commies couldn't resist putting Lenin's mug on the surface!
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ or maybe some other satillittes or airplanes in the sky.
- ↑ Venus surface endurance record: 127 minutes, Venera 13, 1981.
- ↑ Women are from Venus, after all.
- ↑ On the Cosmos episode about Venus, Carl Sagan remarked: "Observation: You couldn't see a thing. Conclusion: Dinosaurs."
- ↑ On the plus side, they hold up under a lot of pressure. <rimshot>