Aquarius – Physical – Heart: VENUS

For a long time, Venus was considered the twin planet of the Earth. However, from the continuous (sometimes unsuccessful) visits by space probes of different origins, it has been concluded that Venus is actually a rare planet and that its resemblance to Earth is reduced only to its composition, mass, size and perhaps internal structure. After the Moon, Venus is the brightest star in the night sky, and since its orbit is within the Earth’s orbit (like Mercury) and its position in the sky is never more than 47 degrees away from the Sun (Mercury 23 degrees), it can be seen in both the western sky at sunset and the eastern sky at sunrise, which is why it is popularly known as the morning or evening star.

Venus is the only planet in the solar system that does not have a magnetic field, nor is there any indication that it ever had one. Mars does not have one either, but five years ago, the American space probe Mars Global Surveyor found residual magnetic fields on it, which indicate that at some point in its history it had them. Unlike the rest of the planets, the surface of Venus does not have a large number of traces of meteorite impacts or other cosmic objects; those observed are, at most, about 500 million years old, which suggests that the current crust of Venus is approximately 500 million years old.

For specialists, this indicates that something happened back then, since its age should be similar to that of the Earth, around 4.5 billion years. One of the hypotheses to explain this phenomenon is that the Venusian crust could be regenerating repeatedly, and that if this is so, what is currently observed reflects the effects of its last renewal. Also, Venus has a retrograde rotational motion, i.e., opposite to the rotational motion of the Earth.

In 2001, Alejandro Correia and Jacques Laskar, of the Astronomie Systemes Dynamiques, France, published in the journal Nature the hypothesis of the cause of the retrograde motion, suggesting that at first the planet rotated «normally», but that the dense atmosphere began to slow down the planet by friction until it stopped and made it rotate in a retrograde direction. The characteristics of each of the planets of the Solar System are directly related to the type of material they captured during their formation and the place where this occurred, influencing their dynamics and evolution.

Venus has great volcanic activity, with about 800 active volcanoes — the largest number of volcanoes of any planet — which means that its atmosphere, composed of clouds of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and sulfuric acid, is also in constant renewal and is by far the densest in the Solar System (90 times denser than the Earth’s). When observed in visible light, Venus appears to be covered by a bright, homogeneous veil, but when observed in the ultraviolet (UV), atmospheric motions of a dense cloud layer appear, circling the planet at high speed and circling it completely in about four days. It has been deduced that this cloud layer is composed of concentrated sulfuric acid.

I invite you to read Matias’ post with the topic of the day.

Venus

Finally, I encourage everyone to reflect on the concept of the day. No one else but us can re-signify our own being