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Authored By Michael M. Michaelson © July 2002 |
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So, You Want To Visit The Other Planets |
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space probes have ended the guesswork regarding Venus. We now know that its surface is covered with rocks, craters, and canyons. Any visitor would be poisoned by the carbon dioxide atmosphere, corroded by acid clouds, and crushed by immense air pressure equal to that of a half-mile depth of seawater. The visitor would also be cooked by the 900' F surface temperature and deafened by continuous thunder! Even though Venus is earth's twin in size, its conditions are the opposite of earth in every way. We can conclude that no Venus life has evolved, nor could life exist if brought there from our planet. Mars has no canals, liquid water, or life of any kind. The sun reflects from its dusty surface with a yellow-orange color. Viking probes started landing on Mars in 1976 and found a desert landscape. Mars has an extinct volcano that is three times higher than Mount Everest. There are also large canyons, one of which is four miles deep and sixty miles wide, four times the size of Grand Canyon. Mars has no air to breathe, and the evening temperature drops to -100' F. Beyond the orbit of Mars lies the asteroid belt, a group of many thousands of rocks that orbit the sun. Some are pebble-sized; others look like flying mountains. This debris is spread out over a gigantic ring that entirely circles the sun. It is not known whether the rocks were created in that form or are the result of some catastrophe in history, such as an exploding planet (which some scientists believe). Jupiter is the largest planet, weighing as much as 318 earths. It circles the sun nearly half a billion miles beyond earth's orbit and has sixteen moons. A small telescope shows the four largest moons of Jupiter as bright dots alongside the planet. Two pink cloud bands on Jupiter's surface can also be seen. They are composed of a variety of poisonous gases. The weather report from this hostile world is not pleasant: magnetic storms, crushing air pressure, an cosmic radiation showers. Obviously for now, there are no plans for a manned visit to Jupiter. Even if we could go, there would be no place to land, since Jupiter does not have a solid surface like earth. Instead, it is a sphere of thick, swirling gas, as are all the large outer planets. The most famous surface feature of Jupiter is the Great Red Spot. This hurricane-like swirl of reddish chemicals has been observed for centuries. It alone is several times the size of the earth. Saturn, the second largest planet, is best known for its halo of rings, which are 160,000 miles wide and are composed of rocks and frozen chemicals, such as ammonia. There are actually hundreds of narrow individual rings, perhaps kept in place by small 'shepherd moons" between them. Astronomers find it incredible that such intricate detail has remained in place for billions of years, although an evolutionary view of long ages leaves little choice. One moon of Saturn, Titan, was once postulated to have evolved life on its surface, since-among other things, Titan has an atmosphere and a large size. However, studies have found mostly nitrogen there, along with some poisonous methane and cyanide. This mixture produces smog and a surface temperature near 3000 degrees! There may be seas of liquid methane and ice bergs of frozen nitrogen on Titan, but there is definitely no life! Uranus shines with a blue-green color due to its methane atmosphere. This planet has a dim halo of five narrow rings and is tipped over on its side. Miranda, one of Uranus's 15 moons, was studied by Voyager in 1986. Its unusual details caused one astronomer to call it 'the moon designed by a committee"! Marking the moon's surface are great oval patterns of grooves, looking like furrows in a field. At Miranda's equator is a 12-mile-high giant cliff. Any astronaut who slipped off such a cliff would fall for ten minutes before hitting bottom! The planet's surface temperature remains around 328'F! |
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Let us consider a few distinctives of each planet in our solar system, in order of distance from the sun: Mercury is the smallest and fastest-moving planet. It makes a revolution around the sun in just 88 days. Heavily cratered and without a trace of an atmosphere, Mercury looks much like our moon. Venus has a surface that remains hidden beneath a permanent cloud cover. Some scientists once predicted that thick jungles and dinosaurs would be found on Venus, while others imagined a world completely covered by stormy seas. In recent years, |
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Pluto is the outer most planet of our solar system. Circling solitary in perpetual darkness. If this tiny planet has any atmosphere, gases cover its hidden surface like a snow storm. Future space probes will certainly reveal many surprises awaiting detection in the far reaches of the solar system. One conclusion from solar system studies is that its physical extremes are almost beyond imagination. The great variety in color, temperature, and surface details effectively rules out all of the simple, secular origin theories. |
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So before buying your ticket to the planets, first consider visiting a mountain lake nearby, or maybe just plant a garden and watch it grow. How about a quiet journey to a sweet flowing river and cast out your line for a brook trout just waiting for you! Maybe take a drive into the country and pick some wild flowers in the green valleys of peace. Or take your crew down to the shores and spend the day picking up trash and garbage left behind by all the wonderful World Citizens! No matter what you decide to do in your spare time, think about how lovely our green and blue earth is and what we might do to better preserve it! Contact Author at: |