Venus: Difference between revisions

{{tropeUseful Notes}}

[[File:Venus_27.png|frame|The Veiled Planet<ref>Note Venus appears featureless in normal light--the picture is taken in the ultraviolet to show clouds</ref>]]

Its surface features, long hidden under the constant cloud cover, were finally mapped by the Magellan space probe using radar in [[The Nineties|the 1990s]]. The highest mountain is Maxwell Montes, almost 7 miles above the average surface level. If you stood on its peak, it'd be a downright chilly 380°C / 716°F, and a mere 60 atmospheres of pressure. The culprit for all this heat is the greenhouse effect -- Earth's atmosphere is less than 1% carbon dioxide, while Venus's is over 90% carbon dioxide. Earth started with the same amount, [[Sealed Evil in Aa Can|but it ended up trapped in carbonate rock]]. Venus also started with the same amount of water as the earth had, but it remained in vapor form (300 atmospheres worth) and created [[Beyond the Impossible|a super greenhouse effect]] with temperatures in the ''thousands'' of degrees<ref>This plus the slow rotation probably wrecked any chance at plate tectonics; instead of plates constantly sliding against each other, [[Lethal Lava Land|there seems to be intermittent vulcanism puncutated by the entire surface melting every 500 million years or so]]</ref>. Eventually the water molecules dissociated into hydrogen and oxygen and escaped into space, leaving Venus high and dry. Due to Venus being mythologically associated with femininity, by convention all geographic features there are named after women or female entities, except for Maxwell Montes and Alpha and Beta Regio.<ref>These features were first detected by ground-based radar in the mid-1960's; Alpha and Beta Regio were the first two terrain features to be isolated, and Maxwell Montes was named after James Clerk Maxwell, the formulator of the theory and equations of electromagnetism that ultimately led to the invention of radar</ref> There is some argument over whether the proper adjective is 'Venusian', 'Venerean', or 'Cytherean'.

* ''[[First Spaceship Onon Venus]]''

* The [[Arthur C. Clarke]] short story "Before Eden" (1961) recounts the tales of the first astronauts to land on Venus, who discover a carpet-like creature living there. They take pictures, then drop off their waste products and blast off. Unbeknownst to them, the creature finds their waste delectable, but has no immunity to the Earth bacteria within it and soon spreads deadly Earth germs to its entire species, [[Downer Ending|wiping them all out]].

* In [[Robert Heinlein]]'s ''[[Space Cadet (Literaturenovel)|Space Cadet]]'', the titular cadets answer a Venusian [[Distress Call]]. Venus is depicted as the typical swamp planet of the pre-Venera wishful-thinking days.

* In [[CSC. LewisS. (Creator)Lewis|CS Lewis]]'s ''[[The Space Trilogy|Perelandra]]'', Venus is a garden of Eden where original sin never occurred.

* An episode of ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'' features a man from [[Useful Notes/Mars (useful notes)|Mars]] who gives [[Super Strength]] to an earthman to see what he'll do with it. The earthman squanders his abilities, so the Martian brags about how pathetic Earthmen are to a patron in an Earth bar. It turns out the man listening to him is from Venus, and the Venusians are about to invade and conquer ''both'' Mars and Earth.

* The 1957 [[B -Movie]] ''20 Million Miles to Earth'' features a spaceship freshly returned from Venus that crashes into the sea near Italy. It turns out to be carrying a Venusian embryo which, predictably, grows up into a giant reptilian monster that terrorizes Rome.

* In ''[[Contact (Filmfilm)|Contact]]'', Dr. Arroway tells her preacher beau that Venus was what convinced her to become an astronomer:

{{quote| 'When I was about eight years old, I was watching the sunset, and I asked my dad, "What’s that bright star over there?", and he said that it wasn’t really a start at all, but it was actually a whole planet called Venus. [points at the sky] Which should be over there soon. He said, "You know why they called it Venus? Because they thought it was so beautiful and glowing. And what they didn’t know is that it was filled with deadly gases and sulfuric acid rain," and I thought, ''This is it, I’m hooked''.'}}

* An episode of ''[[The Six Million Dollar Man]]'' features a space probe engineered to survive on the surface of Venus. It [[Conveniently -Close Planet|accidentally went back to Earth]] and embarked on a rampage of destruction.

* [[Charles Stross]]'s ''Saturn's Children'' starts out in a city floating in Venus's atmosphere, then follows its [[Fem BotFemBot]] protagonist through the rest of [[Useful Notes/The Solar System|The Solar System]]

* [[School HouseSchoolhouse Rock|Interplanet Janet]] split for Venus, but on Venus she found she couldn't see a thing for all the clouds around.

* An episode of [[Cosmos (TV)|Cosmos]] named "Heaven and Hell" features Earth and Venus in the title roles. Venus, according to [[Carl Sagan]], is the one planet in the solar system most like [[Hell]].