Ad Astra: Trollheart's Guide to the Galaxy (And Beyond)

[Trollheart]

As a child, another of my nerdish interests was in space. Not quite so much astronomy - I tried that, but never really got into it in any sort of proper way, the same as I dabbled (using the word very generously) in photography and playing the keyboards - but space itself. This isn’t terribly surprising when you consider a few factors. One, I was a kid. What kid isn’t attracted by space, the stars, travel through the galaxy, aliens etc? Two, I was already into science fiction, so space was almost by default the backdrop for most of what I was reading, and three, space is interesting. It’s interesting on the surface because there’s so much of it and we have explored virtually none of it. The idea of strange and distant stars, planets which might support life (and life vastly different to our own, most likely), to say nothing of the likes of quasars, pulsars and of course black holes, is always attractive, if nothing else, due to the mystery of such phenomena.

Down with Science!

Not really. I’m not advocating the new Republican way, championed (if that’s the right word) by an orange hobgoblin who never learned the first lesson of sportsmanship and how to lose gracefully. I’m not ignoring, challenging or denying science in any way. But hell, for a lot of us science is, what’s the word, oh yeah, boring.

In my initial search for books to support my research into this journal, I came across a lot of writing on particle physics, quantum theory, mathematics of the cosmos and so on, and I left them where I found them. While there has to be a certain amount of science in any exploration, even written, of our universe, I don’t want to get bogged down in dry scientific details, and I don’t have that sort of brain anyway. Much of what I would be reading would be incomprehensible to me. I hated maths as a child and young adult and I never quite got it, and the whole subject bores me. And while I may have no problem boring my audience with my many and varied journals, I’ll be damned if I’m going to bore myself!

So what I intend to do here (how very original I hear you sneer) is to take you on a sort of travelogue of the galaxy, and, as the title promises, most likely beyond that too. I’m going to begin by investigating the planets that surround our sun and make up the solar system in which we live, and then range out further afield, going from star to star as if we’re in a cosmic cruise liner (no, NOT a spaceship of the mind! Keep your allegations of plagiarism to yourself, Neal DeGrasse Tyson!) taking a trip through the wonder of space (no, you can sod off too, Brian Cox! Just because you’re a professor science space guy doesn’t mean you have a monopoly on talking about the universe!) and seeing what it has to offer.

I have the vaguest idea myself of the cosmos. I know all the planets of course - though probably, almost definitely not as well as I think I do, and we’ll find that out here - and a few facts about stars, black holes, quasars, the usual stuff. I’ve heard of the Gates of Creation, the Horsehead Nebula, the Large and the Small Magellanic Clouds, wormholes, gamma ray bursts and binary star systems. I know what they believe the giant red spot on Jupiter is and I know that Venus is almost the same size as Earth. I know the atmosphere on Titan, Jupiter’s largest moon, is made of methane, and that there are volcanoes on Neptune several miles high. But all of these facts, or even factoids, in most cases make up the sum total of my knowledge of each of these planets, while of course I know there is so much more to learn about them. And that’s just the planets. I know Albedaran is a Red Giant, as is Betelgeuse. I know Proxima Centauri is our nearest star, that the Andromeda Galaxy is our closest neighbour, and beyond that I know the names of some stars - Vega, Altair, Cassiopeia, Sirius, Procyon and so on - but that’s all I do know about them.

So this will be a journey of exploration and discovery for me as much as for anyone who reads this. Together we’ll board the cruiser to the stars and head out into the vast reaches of the Milky Way, seeing all the sights we can and learning about the stars and maybe planets, and other stellar phenomena and cosmic points of interest in our own galaxy, before ranging further afield, and travelling to the very boundaries of the universe. I’d advise packing a lunch - replicator food does not come recommended. And make sure your phone is charged: I don’t want any of you draining the precious resources of our ship.

While the intention is to give you some information here, to educate and explain, we’ll be leaving the nuts and bolts and the textbooks to others more qualified than I. Hey, even if you don’t learn anything (though you surely will) there’s still going to be some amazing sights to be seen on our journey, and all you have to do is look out one of the windows. What? Viewscreens? What do you think this is: the starship Enterprise? You have any idea how hard it was to finance this trip? Viewscreens? You’re lucky we have windows!

The name of that ship? Let’s call it - hmm. Let’s call it the Darwin. The man who would become the very father of evolution theory travelled to distant lands in search of the origins of life, so we can now emulate his journey on a cosmic scale, and therefore it only seems right that our interstellar cruise liner should bear his name.

Darwin. The man, not the ship. But then, you knew that. You, uh, did know that….?

So make sure you have your boarding passes, take your spacesick pills and - no you don’t need to put your helmet on: this is a pressurised environment. Where do you think you are? The twentieth century? - prepare for the trip of a lifetime.

Oh, there are no refunds. Just thought I’d mention that.

Right then, in the immortal words of Captain Jean-Luc Picard: let’s see what’s out there!

[Trollheart]

So, it makes sense to start off with the planets in our solar system, right?
Well, not quite…

Chapter I: Dropping in on the Neighbours: A Stroll Through Our Solar System

I: Sunshine On My Face: Our Local Star

Yeah, the most important part of our own solar system is of course that which gives it is name, Sol, or more commonly, the Sun, so that’s where the Darwin is bound on the first leg of our local journey. Make sure you have your shades on: it’s damned bright out there! Insurance? Umm… oh! Look!

While a sun is in fact any star, and every single other star is named (some of which I’ve noted above) ours really never had a name other than “the Sun”, though ancient astronomers did use their own name for the sun, that being Sol, and so sometimes, to distinguish it from other stars or suns, it is referred to as Sol. But really, it’s quite rare that this happens and so throughout this journal I will be calling it the Sun. And it’s our sun, our celestial father who provides us warmth and light and, well, life. No wonder the ancients used to worship it, both as an actual object and as a god, or personification of one. After all, without the sun we’re all dead. Once that glowing orb in the sky that allows you to go bicycling or sitting in the park, or shines hard in upon you at your desk or as you trudge across desert sands, once it goes out, it’s all over people. The Sun nourishes all the planets, keeps them together by the force of its powerful gravitational pull, and regulates their temperature and therefore their weather.

For a very long time, it was firmly believed that the Sun went around the Earth, not the other way around. This was, mostly, because people could not conceive of Earth as being other than the centre of the universe (as was known at the time, which was the few stars visible to the naked eye, and probably not even recognised as such). God, or the gods, had created the Earth, so it stood to reason that it was the most important object in the sky. Well into the sixteenth century, the Christian Church preached that Earth was the centre of the universe (and flat) and if you disagreed, it was off to the Inquisition with you, for a one-time only, all-expenses-paid single ticket to hell and damnation. No, the Church did not take kindly to having its laws questioned, and even Galileo Galilei, known to history as Galileo, was persecuted and tortured by them for daring to suggest otherwise.

(Well, Galileo did, at least, the Italian version. And he was not wrong… Say anything at all, or even look like you were going to say something that contradicted or even questioned Church dogma, and you could expect a summons. And I don’t mean a subpoena either)

But as science began to throw back the shadows of superstition and ignorance, and humanity emerged out of the darkness, new lines of thinking began and, more importantly, advances in technology and science meant that certain facts, held to be unalterable by the Church, such as Earth’s position in the cosmos, were proven completely baseless and untrue, and the reality was widely disseminated, along with actual proof. In 1992, more than three hundred years after he had been branded a heretic and condemned to house arrest after he recanted his “blasphemous” theory that the Earth revolved around the Sun, Galileo received a posthumous apology from the Church, when Pope John Paul II basically shrugged and said “sorry dude, we got it wrong. No hard feelings?” Well, I guess it was something, even if it was three centuries too late.

We now know the Sun to be the centre of our solar system, with eight (originally nine, until poor Pluto was demoted to the status of dwarf planet and removed from the solar system party invitations mailshot) planets orbiting it at different distances, one of which is of course ours. Contrary to popular belief for millennia, and to literary descriptions still used, the Sun neither rises nor sets, this effect being produced as the planet moves around the disc of the Sun, turning its face from the star (of course it’s never fully turned from the Sun, which is why when it’s day in the northern hemisphere, for example, it’s night in the southern). Our Sun is a G-type star, which kind of means it’s nothing special. It’s not a Red or Blue Giant, nor is it a White or Red Dwarf. It’s not a binary or trinary star and it’s not a pulsar, luckily for us. It’s the kind of star that might get mugged for its lunch money walking down the street by the likes of Arcturus or Rigel, or maybe that old bully Betelgeuse, and it would never get to take the pretty girl to the prom. It’s ordinary, in other words.

But it’s our Sun, and while Red Giant might sound like a cool name for a star, trust me, you would not want to live on a planet orbiting one. In reality, you probably couldn’t, as we’ll see later. The Sun is basically a massive hydrogen bomb, with about three-quarters of its mass made up of that element, the rest mostly helium, and 600 million tonnes of hydrogen get converted by the process known as nuclear fusion into helium every second. The Sun is a sort of middle-aged star, four and a half billion years old, but it’s a grizzled old man compared to the sprightly Red Giant Betelgeuse, which has only been around for a piddling ten million, or the blue supergiant Rigel, a mere whippersnapper at seven million (estimated). The oldest stars known to exist go back thirteen to fourteen billion years since their formation. And you thought you felt old on your last birthday!

Eventually though, the Sun will use up all its hydrogen - nothing lasts forever - and transform into a Red Giant, in the process taking out our nearest neighbours, Mercury and Venus, and wiping all life from our own planet. But no need to book a spot on Branson’s Virgin Galactic just yet, you have time. This is estimated to occur in around five billion years, so lots of time put the kettle on and have a nice cuppa.

Under the Hood: Everything Under the Sun

The Sun, like most stars, is constructed of several layers, at which we will now take a quick look. Don’t get too close: the surface of the Sun reaches temperatures of about 5,500 degrees Centigrade (nearly 10,000 Fahrenheit) - talk about sunburn! It’s actually so hot that no liquid or solid matter can survive there, and so the Sun is basically a giant ball of superheated gas. Want to land on its surface? Tough. Even if you could somehow construct a craft that would resist such matter-melting temperatures, there’s nothing there to land on. You might as well attempt to plant your flag of stupidity on the surface of Jupiter - which, again, has none. In fact, quite a few of our planets are gas giants, but again we’ll come to them in due course.

Core

This is, as you might expect, the very centre of the Sun, making up about a quarter of its surface, and is where those chemical reactions I spoke of earlier takes place. Hydrogen is fused to helium and produces energy. If you thought the surface of the Sun was hot (it is) then get this: in the core, temperatures regularly reach up to fifteen million degrees (I’m not going to translate that to Fahrenheit because a) what’s a few million degrees between friends and b) my thermometers keep vapourising) and the pressure is immense (there are some science-y measurements but they don’t mean anything to me and probably won’t mean anything to you, so let’s just say if you feel pressure about your impending nuptials or that promotion you’re hoping for, or your upcoming gig, try doing it at the core of the Sun and see how you feel!) as hot, dense plasma is fused to produce the energy and heat the Sun gives off, and sent via several layers to the surface, first by radiation and then, once it’s got through the denser layers, by convection.

Radiative Zone

Sounds like something out of a Superman comic, doesn’t it? But no, this is actually the next layer of the Sun, where the energy released in the core is transformed by photonic radiation and sent on its journey towards the surface. Because the matter is so dense here, it can take over 170,000 years for gamma rays to get to the surface of the Sun, which is good news for us, as gamma rays are very dangerous and we don’t really want to see the Sun spewing them out during our lifetime.

Tachocline

This is a buffer zone between the Radiative and the Convection Zone

Convection Zone

See? The Convection Zone (not to be confused with the Convention Zone, a floating space platform for those who constantly go to meets and symposia) is where the energy from the core of the Sun is pushed to the surface by convection (by the circulation of currents within the star) rather than radiation (via electromagnetic photons) as the solar plasma from the core loses density and heat, and currents develop to carry the energy to the surface.

Photosphere

The part of the Sun we’re all most familiar with, the basic surface, the layer below which the Sun becomes opaque to visible light, and we see sunlight. This is the effect of photons escaping through this layer and the transparent atmosphere below it, becoming solar radiation, sunlight.

Atmosphere

We’re used to hearing this word, and it describes the ratio of gases that surround a planet, making it either breathable or not. As mentioned earlier, Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, has an atmosphere composed primarily of methane, which is poisonous to humans, whereas Earth’s atmosphere is mostly Oxygen and Nitrogen, which is not. But the Sun’s atmosphere refers more to the corona surrounding the star, which is made up of four separate elements.

The Chromosphere, transition region and corona are all hotter than the surface of the Sun. The transition region stands between the Chromosphere and the corona, the latter being the kind of halo we see around the Sun, and the thing we draw when kids as either wavy lines or spikes coming off the disc. It’s also the sort of shimmery halo you see when there’s a solar eclipse. It is in constant motion, moving at a rate of about 400 KM/second, called the solar wind. The final layer, the uppermost, is the heliosphere, and is filled with solar wind plasma.

Solar phenomena

We’ve all heard of the weird things stars - well, our Sun anyway - tend to do, but a quick checklist here.

We have solar flares, which are sudden flashes of brightness on the surface of the Sun, accompanied by ejection of coronal matter and which emit powerful radio waves, which, if the flare comes close to Earth, can penetrate the atmosphere and disrupt communications such as radio and television, and possibly internet too. They can also appear as bright auroras in the ionosphere.

Then there are sunspots. These are not, as you might possibly think, our native star having a bad case of acne, nor indeed places where holidaymakers go to escape the rain, but are in fact areas on the surface of the Sun - ranging in size from a tiny 16 km across to a maximum 160,000 - where the temperature has dropped slightly. They are indications of intense magnetic activity, and often give rise to the aforementioned solar flares, as well as coronal mass ejections. They travel across the surface at speeds of about a few hundred metres per second, and in the case of larger ones, can be seen with the naked eye. If, that is, you decide like an idiot to look directly at the Sun, which is not recommended.

Coronal mass ejections? Oh yeah I mentioned them didn’t I? Well they’re basically plasma thrown off the surface of the Sun, accompanied by magnetic field, and often, as I said already, associated with or follow solar flares. They, too, occur around sunspot areas and they can also arise during solar prominences, of which more in a mo. They get released into the solar wind, and at maximum solar activity there can be anything up to three a day, whereas on the other end of the scale, at minimum solar activity, you might be lucky to see one every five days. If a CME hits Earth atmosphere it can kick up a geomagnetic storm, like the big one in 1989, which took out Quebec’s power grid for nine hours, plunging the city into darkness and leaving the area without electricity. CMEs can also carry SEP (Solar Energetic Particles) which are responsible for both the Northern and Southern Lights, at the North and South Pole respectively.

The last one I want to look at here (there are others, but hell, they’re mostly boring, and we don’t do boring) are solar prominences, which I rather foolishly believed until a few hours ago to be the same as solar flares. They’re not. Solar prominences remain anchored to the surface of the Sun, creating kind of loops that go from the photosphere to the corona, and while they can break apart and become CMEs, usually this tends not to happen. They can last for weeks or even months and are huge - the largest on record almost the diameter of the Sun itself, about 800,000 kilometres. A prominence viewed against the Sun instead of against space is called a solar filament.

[Trollheart]

Well I’m afraid we can’t ignore the science like the Republicans, and we have to check out some of those tedious specs about the Sun. So here they are.

Diameter: Approx 800,000 KM* (109 times that of Earth)
Volume:** Approx 1,300,000 times that of Earth
Mass: Equivalent to 333,000 Earths
Gravity: 28 times that of Earth
Distance from Earth: 150,000,000 kms (1 AU***)
Star Type: G
Sidereal rotation period (at equator): Yeah, like we’re going to get into that kind of shit! Didn’t you see the logo above? As if.

** As I couldn’t be arsed constantly converting this to that, I’ve picked one measurement to go with and it’s kilometres, where I can use it. You want miles, I got one word for ya: Google.*

*** The size of stars makes many of the measurements used a little hard to understand for a non-brainiac like me (see? I couldn’t even spell brainiac without three attempts to do so!) and it makes it easier to use its relevance to Earth, so, rather like the annoying way they say on certain documentaries “100 feet, that’s two football fields” or whatever, here it’s a case of that much larger than Earth or in some cases so many Earths bigger. You’ll get the hang of it.

**** AU is the Astronomical Unit, which is basically, as above, 150 million km, or the distance from the Earth to the Sun. As we get out into space, things like kms don’t really cut it so you’ll find AUs being used a whole lot more, so get used to it.[/I]*

Things I Have Learned About the Sun

Like I said at the start, this is a voyage of discovery as much for me as for you. Like most of my journals, I kind of know sod-all about the subject, or have a loose grasp of it, and supplement my knowledge through the time-honoured process of research. Or, to put it another, perhaps more accurate way, I look at the writing of people who know a hell of a lot more about me than the subject, steal it, rewrite it, and post it. Not literally obviously, and that’s somewhat satirical, but in the end, isn’t that what all research is? Looking to others to tell you what you want to know, and then imparting it to your readership?

As a result of this, I have already found out quite a lot about the Sun I did not know. And here is what I have found out.

The Sun is older than I thought. Not that I didn’t know how old it was, I just didn’t realise that it kind of straddles the middle age of stars, with the oldest being up to 14 billion years old (who’s paying for the candles on that cake, I wonder?) and the youngest counting their age in mere millions.

I did not know that our Sun is technically classed as a dwarf star. It is, a yellow one to be precise (which, given its actual colour is said to be white, confuses me, but then I’m easily confused). I also did not know that up to eighty percent of the stars in at least our galaxy are also dwarfs of various colours.

I thought that solar flares and solar prominences were the same thing. They’re not.

I had no idea that the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) and Australis (Southern Lights) are caused by eruptions from the Sun called CMEs, or Coronal Mass Ejections.

[Trollheart]

Fun factoids

Many of these you will know, but I’m going to tell you anyway.

Like I noted in the introduction, in ancient times the Sun was both worshipped as a god and as a representation of a god, which is to say, the Egyptians for example revered the sun-god Ra, and the Sumerians believed the Sun was Utu, the god of justice and twin brother of the queen of Heaven, Inanna. The Greeks and Romans explained the movement of the Sun across the sky by imagining it was draw in a golden chariot by Helios, who had to rest at night, thus darkness fell. They also were under the mistaken impression that the Sun was a planet, which is why they named the seven days of the week after seven known planets at the time, including the Sun. (These appear to have been the only ones that could be seen with the naked eye - so Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Moon and the Sun - oddly, they didn’t include Earth, whether they understood or believed it too was a planet I don’t know).

Norse legend didn’t have much about the Sun, but then, given how damn cold it is up there in Scandinavia, they probably didn’t see it often enough to assign it the importance of a god, though the Chinese believed there were originally ten Suns but they messed around too much in the sky and burned the people, so a hero shot nine of them down, leaving just the one. Weird, but I suppose no weirder than thinking the sun was driven across the sky in a chariot. I mean, who would insure such a daily trip? And whoever they were, I bet Helios lost his no-claims bonus when his son Phaeton snagged the keys and the whole thing went tits-up. But I mean, come on: these people (the Chinese) also explained a solar eclipse as the bite of a magical dragon or dog. Right. Sure they did.

Ah well we Irish weren’t much better. Sure we used to swear that the sun was a woman, honest! Even Christianity took the idea of using December 25 from a sun-worshipping crowd, as explained by the 12th century Syrian bishop Jacob Bar-Salibib (died 1191): “It was a custom of the Pagans to celebrate on the same 25 December the birthday of the Sun, at which they kindled lights in token of festivity. In these solemnities and revelries the Christians also took part. Accordingly when the doctors of the Church perceived that the Christians had a leaning to this festival, they took counsel and resolved that the true Nativity should be solemnised on that day.”

Back in the real world, ultraviolet light from the sun is what causes sunburn if you don’t use the old Factor 500 or whatever, and of course as we all know by now it also causes skin cancer, though it has its good points too, being responsible for varying degrees of human skin pigmentation due to its being filtered through the Earth’s ozone layer at different latitudes. But back to bad stuff, and we all know that despite both U2 and Threshold (who?) writing songs called “Staring at the Sun”, this is bad advice, and can result in temporary or even permanent blindness. That’s just from looking at the sun with your eyes (though your natural defences make you blink and squeeze your eyes shut pretty quickly, so unless you’re really stupid, or want, for some reason, to damage your eyesight, the chances of that happening are relatively low) - try using binoculars or a telescope and say goodbye to those eyes. Just because it’s over 170 million kilometres away doesn’t mean it can’t sear your retinas after a few seconds, so don’t even risk it.

And you might think (though again you’d be an idiot if you did) that it might be safe to look at the Sun during an eclipse, when most of it is blocked by the Moon. But it isn’t. If you’ve ever participated in such an event, you should know that you need special protection even then to look directly at the sun, and you’re placing your eyesight at grave risk if you ignore the safety instructions and don’t take the recommended precautions. Why do you have to do this? Glad you asked.

Despite what we all think, the uncovered portion of the Sun left visible during the eclipse is still as bright as during a normal day, and not only that, but the human pupil opens more to compensate for the loss of light, about three times as wide, which actually allows up to ten times as much light into it as would normally be the case. Finally, you don’t even feel your retinal cells dying. There’s no pain, it just happens, and suddenly you have blind spots and trouble seeing. So basically, don’t take the risk. This even happens during a partial solar eclipse, so just watch it. Or preferably, don’t.

The thing about space exploration is that you really do end up getting bogged down in science-y talk and figures and jargon. The very first book I read to get information about the Sun, The Inner Solar System: The Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars (An Explorer’s Guide to the Universe) by Erik Gregerson bombarded me with so many crazy concepts - electrons, photons, protons and neutrons all doing their thing, this to the power of that, measurements I had never even heard of before, the angle of the ecliptic (well that wasn’t there, but I’ve heard it before and thought I’d use it just to sound brainy. What is it? How the hell should I know?) and chemical symbols all over the place, that I became… what is that word? There’s a word for what happened to me when I read it (or rather, scanned down it, going a little glassy-eyed in the process) - oh yeah. Bored. I got bored.

See, as I said at the beginning, and as the reappearance of the logo above should remind you, although this is to be a voyage of discovery it ain’t a school trip, or an academic attempt to prove this or postulate that, or even a serious attempt to quantify the phenomena of the universe. Nah. This is, primarily, a sight-seeing tour, where I’ll be pointing out items of interest and doing what I can to talk about them without sending you all, and myself, to sleep.

So I am studiously (if that’s not a contradiction in terms, and if it is, then suck it) and deliberately ignoring the harder bits, the ones where these brainiacs go into deep detail and get all science tech and prove they could not only buy and sell me on their subject, but give me away as a free gift. They can do that, and more power to them (to the power of whatever). Me? I just like learning stuff, but not stuff that’s going to crowd out my brain and make it hurt. Therefore, if, as we pull away from the Sun you’re waving your arms and shouting but but but! You didn’t explain how this works and I want to know about that and I don’t understand the other, just sit down and get a grip, will you? Nobody cares, and if they do, there’s this wonderful thing called the internet where you can find out anything you want and go as deep as makes you happy, but the rest of us will be off enjoying ourselves.

All sounds very frivolous, doesn’t it? Good. While I will be ensuring we all learn the basics about things like planets, comets, galaxies, pulsars and asteroids shaped like dancing moose, I want to keep it interesting but also entertaining, light-hearted and easy to follow. So I guess you might call it The Universe for Dummies, though if you call me a dummy you may be asked to check that faulty airlock down on deck seven. Unless you’re into science in a heavy way, or do it for a living, it’s usually been my experience that too much information can be a real pain and people lose interest very quick. So we’re doing the basics, and no more. You want to find out more, be my guest. The rest of us are just here to enjoy the trip.

So break out the space beer - which is, basically, just beer you drink in space. So, yeah, beer. So break out the beer and let’s visit the neighbours, as we leave the Sun behind and knock on the door of the guy who lives nearest the big yellow one.

[Trollheart]

II: (Sometimes) Hotter than Hell: Welcome to Mercury

Even the least informed among you will be aware that Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, and therefore the hottest. Well not quite. I always thought this, but it seems that because Mercury has no atmosphere, and therefore no way to retain heat, despite its heat source being only 58 million km away, its surface temperature fluctuates wildly between day and night. In the day it can reach temperatures of up to 800 degrees Centigrade, whereas at night it plunges to -173 C. Anyone trying to list off the planets (come on, who would fail at such a task? Oh well, I remember someone on a quiz recently apparently forgetting the soil he stood on was part of a planet, and thinking it was Mercury, Venus, Mars….) will always know that Mercury comes first, so it’s always uppermost in people’s minds. It’s also the smallest of the planets as you might expect, a mere 0.05 times the size of Earth, with gravity at 0.3, which I guess means you could fly on Mercury, if you weren’t busy being fried to a crisp, that is. Or being reduced to tiny ice cubes.

Mercury is one of only two planets in our solar system devoid of moons, its nearest neighbour being the other. In some ways, Mercury displays some of the characteristics of our moon at least - pock-marked with craters, inactive, dead and without any atmosphere, although nobody to my knowledge has ever written a song called “By the Light of the Silvery Mercury” or suchlike. Just doesn’t have the same romanticism. Another reason why, perhaps, Mercury doesn’t figure all that much in human culture - certainly not as much as Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and Venus, for instance - is that it’s very damned hard to see. Because its orbit is within that of Earth, and due to its proximity to the Sun, it can usually only be seen after sunset on the western horizon and before sunrise on the eastern.

It’s a lot denser than Earth, by which I don’t mean it gets a lower SAT score: its core takes up about 55% of the planet, whereas ours only extends to 17%, and Mercury is one of the richest sources of iron in the solar system. Long narrow ridges extend for several hundred kilometres along its surface, as well as mare*-like plains and craters, similar to those on the moon. Like the moon, it also has highlands, mountains, valleys and escarpments. Some of the craters are hundreds of kilometres wide, though some are quite small. The largest is called Caloris Basin or Plantitia, and is 1,500 km wide.

Due to the contraction which occurred as Mercury cooled, the surface has been deformed into things like wrinkle ridges and lobate scarps (curved or scalloped cliffs), as well as compression folds known as rupes or cliffs. The many volcanoes on the planet (billions of years dormant now of course) are all of the shield variety, which means they’re almost flat to the ground, rather than the ones we’re familiar with, caldera and mountains. Perhaps strangely, given its proximity to the Sun, it’s theorised that ice may exist on Mercury. This is supported by the fact that the temperature at the poles, which never receive direct sunlight, is always at about -170 C, and cold traps have developed on the floors of deep craters at the poles. Messenger, a probe sent out in 2012, confirmed that there is enough water ice at the north pole of Mercury to “encase all of Washington DC in a block of ice two and a half miles deep”. Hah! That’d show Congress eh? Shut down the government, indeed! No doubt it would be all blamed on Obama or Trump, depending on your political views. The next probe to visit Mercury, scheduled to arrive in 2025, will explore this further.

* A Mare is a flat, basaltic plain created by volcanic eruptions, the word coming from the old Latin for sea, which is probably how they were once viewed in early times.

Ever asked yourself if this day would ever end? Well thank your lucky stars you aren’t on Mercury, where the day lasts 1,400 hours or approximately 58 Earth days! Try getting through that one without telling the boss where to shove his job!And, you know, burning up or freezing. As for years, well this is quite weird, because it seems Mercury spins faster on its axis than it rotates around the sun - a trip which takes it 87 days - meaning that one Mercury year doesn’t even last two Mercury days! Imagine all the presents you’d be getting for birthdays! Then again, imagine how quickly you’d age if every year was only 87 instead of 365 days. Oh man! I’d be, what, well over two hundred years old! Bet I don’t look a day over a hundred though.

Because the planet’s tilt is almost zero, the least of any of the planets in our system, an observer on Mercury would see the sun rise almost two-thirds of the way over the horizon, then reverse and go back down and come back up, all in the same day! Hey darling, let’s go watch the sun rise, set and rise again, shall we? It’s so romantic! Oh but that’s not the best of it. Once every Mercurian year (every other Mercurian day, in other words) at certain points on the planet’s surface the sun goes overhead, reverses direction, comes back over again, reverses direction again and comes back over a third time. At this point, the Sun is basically stationery. No, that’s not right is it? That would mean our native star suddenly became a load of pens and paper clips and notepads. Stationary, that’s the one. Not moving. Stopped. Like the queue in the post office just when you have to catch that bus.

Kind of amazing to hear that a report issued in March 2020 suggested that life may at one time have existed on Mercury, although it’s unlikely to have been bronze-suited Mercurians saluting the huge god that seemed always to be watching over them, but rather tiny micro-orgasms, sorry organisms. Not expecting too much in the way of written history, then. Interesting that several cultures all linked the planet with their version of the messenger of the gods, the Babylonians naming it Nabu, the Greeks Hermes and the Romans of course Mercury, which was the one which stuck. This might be because (Trollheart Hypothesis # 340, all rights reserved) it is the planet closest to the sun, which was generally seen as the father or creator god, so this planet would be designated as its messenger. Maybe. Who knows?

Probes sent

Mariner 10

Launched: 1973
Reached Destination: 1974
Results: Mapped about 45% of the planet, confirmed its very weak atmosphere of helium, the existence of a magnetic field and also confirmed the highest deposits of iron found in any of the planets. Determined maximum and minimum temperatures on the surface of the planet.
Photographs taken: 2,800
Mission ended: 1975
Termination of probe: Deactivated remotely and believed yet to orbit the Sun

MESSENGER (MErcury Surface Space ENvironment GEochemistry and Ranging)
Note: Isn’t it weird how everything associated with Mercury turns out to have to do with messengers? Obviously, this one was planned, but still. I mean, let’s be honest, the acronym is about as forced as you can get. It could easily have been called the Monsignor, or I don’t know, the Massager?)
Launched: 2004
Reached Destination: 2008 (but flybys only; entered Mercury orbit 2011)
Results: Mapped 100% of surface, examined the atmosphere, made detailed study of the planet’s geology from orbit, studied its magnetic field, its surface, the poles and the core. Discovered the presence of water, also volcanoes. The revelation that there were carbon-containing organic compounds on the planet led to speculation that life might have existed there once.
Photographs taken: 100,000
Mission ended: 2015
Termination of probe: Crashed into Mercury

Future probes

BepiColumbo

Launched: 2018
To reach Mercury: 2025

Mercury-P (Меркурий-П)

Launch date: 2031 (planned)
As you might have gathered from the characters, this is being launched, or at least its launch is proposed, by the Russian Space Agency, and if successful will be the first probe to actually land on the surface of Mercury.

[Trollheart]

It’s time for some boring figures. Sigh. Let’s get on with it then.

Distance from Sun: 70,000,000 Km - 49,000,000 km (Because Mercury’s orbit is so eccentric, two figures have to be used, one for when it’s closest to the Sun - Aphelion - and one for when it’s furthest away - Perihelion)
Distance from Earth: (approx) 85,000,000 kms
Diameter: 4,880 km
Density: 5.427 g/cm
Surface gravity: 0.38g
Satellites: None
Atmosphere: None, other than a very tenuous exosphere containing mostly helium
Length of day: 88 Earth days
Length of year: 58 Earth days
Axial tilt: 0.034 degrees
Mass: 0.055 Earths
Volume: 0.056 Earths
Surface Temperature Range: 430 to -180 degrees Centigrade
Weather: None

So after all that, what have we learned? Well, I don’t know about you, but

That Mercury could be cold. I mean, who did? And SO cold!

That there was ice, or even water, on the planet.

That it had virtually no atmosphere

That the sun can rise, set and rise in the same day!

That one Mercurian year - two Mercurian days

That Mercury moved within the orbit of Earth

That there’s a possibility the planet could have at one time sustained life, however basic

Look, let’s just say I knew shit about Mercury, and now I know a lot more. And I hope you do too.

Interesting factoids

Why, do you think, the planet was named after the Roman messenger of the gods? Well, I gave one possible reason in the text, but it’s also possible that the fact that the planet moves so fast, in relation to other planets, across the sky, is connected to the supposed fleetness of Hermes/Mercury, and even the Assyrians, some of the most ancient of the old races (sorry Cthulhu!) named it “the jumping planet”. Asian mythology calls it, oddly, the water star, while Hindu belief had it linked to the god Budha, who was believed to preside over the day known as Wednesday - possibly why the French word for that day is Mercredi? Odin was certainly linked with both the planet and the day, actually giving us our modern denomination for it - Woden’s Day (Odin was often called Woden) or Wednesday.

The Hubble Space Telescope, one of the most powerful and certainly most famous, and longest-serving, having been sent into orbit in 1990, is prevented from observing Mercury due to its proximity to the Sun. Just like I noted in the article on the Sun dealing with the dangers of blindness when looking into the sun with optical instruments, it would be catastrophic for anyone to view the tiny planet through the Hubble as the Sun would be too close.

Mercury is unique in the solar system in its rotation, as it spins three times on its axis for every two times it orbits the Sun. This, apparently, is referred to as a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance. Of course it is.

Although without question, the planet most championed by the writers of science fiction has traditionally been Mars (leading some people to refer, incorrectly, to all invading aliens as Martians, no matter their actual point of origin) Mercury has seen its fair share of tribute in print too. I remember reading Asimov’s Lucky Starr books, one of which was called The Big Sun of Mercury, and it comes up in other of his stories, as well as works by C.S. Lewis, Kurt Vonnegut and Ben Bova, among others. Most notably, Arthur C. Clarke sets his Rendezvous with Rama there, and Mercury is also the backdrop for books by Larry Niven, Kim Stanley Robinson, Stephen Baxter and David Brin. It also shows up in Star Trek Voyager, Futurama and Sailor Moon, to name but a few.

Oh, and you’ll be completely unsurprised, I should imagine, to hear that the first telescopic observations of Mercury were made by (anyone?) - yes, the Church’s Public Enemy Number One, Galileo.

So that’s as far as we’re going to explore Mercury. Anyone else finding it very hot in here? I think I need a drink. I’ll be down in the bar if anyone wants me. Oh well surely you can guess where we’re headed next? If not, just look out one of the windows. No, I told you we couldn’t get funding for viewscreens, why don’t you listen? Of course you won’t fall out: they don’t actually open! I mean, what kind of idiot opens a window on a spaceship? And why? To breathe in lungfuls of cool, fresh vacuum? We’re in space, dummy, or did you forget? You want fresh air, head down to the arboretum. No, I know it’s one skinny scraggly tree and hardly deserves the name, but it’s better than nothing.

Or better yet, come with me down to the bar. I think it may be your round. No, no. I’m sure it is.

No, don’t worry: they’ll call us when we reach our next destination.

What do you mean, no funds for a comms system?

Damn it. Right, well, someone can come down and tell us.

Come on, come on: all this talking has made me thirsty!

[Trollheart]

III: A Woman Scorned: Venus in Heat

In recent times - or at least, I’ve only heard it recently - our nearest neighbour has been referred to as “Earth’s evil twin”. This is because Venus exhibits many of the main characteristics of our home planet, and in some ways, is almost a future vision of it, or what Earth may become if we don’t get up off our arses and do something about global warming. You see, Venus is kind of the poster child, or indeed cautionary tale for climate change, having already undergone the effect of the release of greenhouse gases across the planet, thus making it uninhabitable, if it ever was so, and all but a vision of Hell, right on our own doorstep. Just shows how wildly inaccurate ancient astronomers were when they saw it in the heavens and decided to lavish upon it the name of the goddess of love.

Setting aside the surface similarities between our planet and Venus, there are marked differences and none of them are good, not for us and not for the planet. It is the hottest planet in the solar system, bar none (and this surprises me because before we began our little expedition I always assumed that to be Mercury) with temperatures reaching 464 degrees Centigrade, has an atmosphere almost entirely composed of carbon dioxide and features gentle, relaxing clouds of… sulphuric acid, lending a new meaning to the term acid rain! Atmospheric pressure on the surface is 92 times that of Earth’s at sea level, or to put it another way, if you want to know what a brisk stroll on Venus would be like, dive into the ocean and descend to about 900m (that’s 3,000 feet, and also the last time I’m calculating another measurement scale) and you’ll get the idea.

As I indicated a few paragraphs ago, Venus has fallen victim to the runaway greenhouse effect. And no, that doesn’t describe a thief legging it with your prize cucumbers. When the greenhouse gases on a planet’s surface (we’re all familiar with/fed up hearing about those) rise and block thermal radiation from leaving the planet, no water can form and any water vapour there is will be likely to escape through the stratosphere and out into space. Essentially, the planet can’t cool down, and so it becomes a burning desert of a planet, dry and arid and exceptionally hot. The main greenhouse gases are water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone. These gases are essential to life, but must be released into the air and dissipated. When this does not happen, as I say above, a runaway greenhouse effect results and you get a planet like Venus.

Venus is also the only other planet in the solar system not to have a single moon. In fact, in a weird coincidence, probably, the number of moons per planet increases as you move out into the solar system, with Mercury and Venus having none, Earth having one, Mars two and then of course the gas giants have them in the tens, Saturn having over eighty of them.

As if all the above though is not enough to classify Venus as a hell-planet, the atmosphere contains sulphur, and there may have been relatively recent volcanic activity on its surface. Let’s just say we won’t be landing there on our trip. I don’t think our insurance would cover it. What do you mean, you thought I was arranging it? Well now that’s just… tell you what, say nothing to the others. I don’t fancy taking an unscheduled space walk, do you? Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. No need to worry about insurance, everything is fine. So Venus has no moons. Right. Nevertheless, it is the brightest object in the sky, and you’ve no doubt seen it, even if you haven’t realised or cared what it was, on a clear night.

Most of the surface of the planet is covered by smooth volcanic plains, the rest composed of two highland plains, one of which, Ishtar Terra, boasts an eleven-kilometre high mountain (that’s like eleven Everests stacked one on top of the other) and unlike Mercury the surface of Venus features few craters, and is relatively smooth. This means the planet is quite young, a mere babe in arms actually, no more than 600 millions years old (ahhh!) and possibly even as young as 300. Coochy-coo! Ahem. There are features called farra, which are mostly flat, pancake-like depressions, arachnoids, which are not, as you might fear, robot killer spiders that patrol the surface, but rather radial or concentric fractures which look like spiders’ webs, coronae, circular rings of fractures which are often surrounded by a depression, and have nothing to do with the sun, and novae, radial, starlike fractures. All of these stem from volcanic activity.

Like its little brother, Mercury, the possibility for life seems to exist on Venus, although the detection of phosphine - a gas which scientists believed was impossible to create in Venus’s chemical atmosphere, and could only have come from living organisms - in the clouds above the planet have actually given rise to speculation that life currently exists there, albeit, again, no life we would recognise. No Venusian war wizards, for instance, or nubile princesses living in sky cities. Sorry, Mr. Burroughs! Mind you, Carl Sagan had been saying this since the sixties: [i]“While the surface conditions of Venus make the hypothesis of life there implausible, the clouds of Venus are a different story altogether. As was pointed out some years ago, water, carbon dioxide and sunlight—the prerequisites for photosynthesis—are plentiful in the vicinity of the clouds.”

(“Life in the Clouds of Venus?” - Carl Sagan and Harold Morowitz, Nature Magazine, September 16 1967)[/i]

Still, this hypothesis seems to have been discounted after October 2020, when a re-examination of the clouds seemed to show no signs of phosphine, and the belief is that - without going into scientific terms which I neither understand nor care about - somebody fucked up and detected something that was not there. Well, I suppose at least the Venusians won’t be coming over here, taking our jobs, stealing our women…

The winds on Venus are very sluggish, but powerful nonetheless, mostly due to the very high density of the planet’s atmosphere, and the dispersal by the winds of dust and small stones across the surface. It’s pretty much the same wherever you go on the planet, or when, as neither seasonal changes nor geographic location varies across Venus, its axial tilt, while still a lot more pronounced than that of Mercury (but then, so is that of any other planet in the system) is a mere three percent and therefore doesn’t permit much in the way of change. In fact, if you want to cool down you’re best scaling that 11 km-high mountain, Maxwell Montes, where you’ll be able to bask in the refreshing temperature of a nice cooling 350 degrees C. Lovely! Yeah, that’s as cool as it gets on this planet. Oh, and that stuff that looks like snow on the peaks? Take my word for it, it’s not.

Despite the slow winds on the surface, if you were to somehow attempt to fly on Venus you would find it a whole different matter, as the winds up in the clouds rush around at about 300 kph every four or five days. That’s way faster and stronger than our Storm Force 10 winds on Earth, or the kind of winds that accompany the likes of hurricanes, which rarely reach over 120 kph. Venus has no seasons, no real weather, certainly no rain, ice or snow, though there is some speculation that it gets lightning storms. This however has not been proven, and there is plenty of doubt as to whether this could be possible in the dense atmosphere of the planet.

[Trollheart]

Venus differs from all other planets in the solar system by rotating clockwise, and very slowly, making its days longer than its years. A Venusian day is 243 Earth days while a Venusian year is only 225. Because of its atypical rotation, were it possible for it to be seen through the thick clouds of sulphur, the sun would be seen to rise in the west and set in the east on Venus. Although the planet has no moons, it’s theorised it may have had once, but either the lack of solar tides destabilised it/them and made it/them crash into Venus, or a large impact event, thought to have taken place millions of years after the planet had formed, may have resulted in the same outcome. Venus does however have small satellite asteroids, called trojans, which orbit it. Sure they do Trojan work, they do! Sorry.

Transits of Venus are not tough rugged white vans that haul cargo between here and there, but times at which the planet passes between the sun and Earth, and therefore becomes visible against the surface of the sun as a black spot. These transits usually take hours to complete, are often visible to the naked eye, and occur very infrequently, normally with about a century between one and the next. They occur in pairs, usually eight years apart. They can be likened to eclipses, and in addition to providing a pretty spectacular sight, help scientists to work out all sorts of things, including, recently, the existence of exo-planets (planets outside of our solar system) and prior to that, the size of the astronomical unit (AU).

As one of the brightest objects in the sky, Venus can be, and has been, observed in daylight. I believe I may have seen it myself. The ancient Greeks believed it was two planets, as Venus vanishes behind the sun for several days and then reappears: they called it Phosporos, the bringer of light, when they could see it in the morning, and Hesperus, the star of the evening, when they saw it at night. Later these two words became Lucifer, light bearer, the morning star.

Venus was in fact the first planet humans ever visited, albeit not personally, and a glut of space probes headed there during the late twentieth century. However, because it is impossible to land there, and the planet couldn’t be colonised or terraformed or mined, interest in its observation and exploration has waned in the twenty-first, as we focus on Mars and, um, Pluto? However before interest was lost, there was some discussion about terraforming the planet. Some of these ideas have to be read to be believed.

Terraforming Venus: Truth is weirder (and more hilarious) than fiction!

Can we terraform Venus?

Yes we can!
Maybe…

Note: if anyone reading this is affiliated with NASA or involved in this sort of research, I’m not laughing at your ideas. Well yes I am, but then who knows what’s possible? They said men would never fly. They said the Earth was flat. They said the moon was not made of green… what? Really? You’re sure about that, now, are you? Excuse me, I have to call my broker right away!

Making Venus habitable hinges on three important factors. First, lowering the temperature to at least a tolerable level that would not reduce any colonists to sticky slop on the ground. Second, filter the atmosphere: that carbon dioxide might be great for plants (not that there are any on Venus, as there is no water and they’d just burn up anyway) but it ain’t good for we humans, and Venus’s atmosphere is chock-full of it. Finally, as Venus has no oxygen, we’d have to get some in there. Call in the Oxygen Board! What do you mean, you’re cutting us off as we didn’t pay our bill?

Here’s a fellow nerd to explain some of how it might be done…

How To Terraform Venus - Making Venus an Earth-Like Habitable Planet

And here’s another, with cool animations…

How To Terraform Venus (Quickly)

Mirror, mirror, in the sky…

Look, I’ve read some crazy things about the proposed exploration and colonisation of Venus, among them the idea of people floating around in balloons and sky cities (I ain’t kidding, you’ll see!) but glancing down I see the words “space mirror” and, well, it’s like candy to me. I got to go see what this is about.

Oh, man! That is like something out of Futurama. Except, it’s real. Apparently. The idea is to combat the “two-month Venusian night” by having a 1,700 metre mirror on a satellite orbiting the planet, in order to dispel the darkness and light up the planet with the “luminosity of 10-20 morons.” Oh, sorry, that’s moons. Maybe my unfortunate slip was more accurate! Oh, dear. What else is there? This is comical.

Because it’s there. Well, not yet it’s not, but it could be.

Okay, okay. Also proposed was a 50km-high mountain that would be so high that the temperatures at its summit would be tolerable for human habitation, and everyone would live on this mountain. Oh dear lord. If you go for a walk, John, make sure you don’t stray too close to the edge there. It’s a long way downnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn….!


Ice, Ice baby: once in a blue moon

Oh merciful heavens, my sides! Look, this may all be accepted as sound scientific practice, but I just can’t help laughing at some of these suggestions. How about crashing Venus into one of the ice moons on the outer edges of the solar system, where there is a plentiful supply of water in the ice there? Or is i the other way around? Yeah, probably. That should solve the water problem on the planet! How in the name of Captain Jean-Luc Picard are you supposed to do that? I worry about people like the guy who had this idea, one Paul Birch, especially when he quips “In theory, you could flick a pebble into the asteroid belt and send Mars crashing into the sun.” What? I mean, what? No, like, I really mean, what??

You’re fired, sun!

Futurists are weird people, but hey, this is a weird section, and to be honest, while supposedly all of this is doable, at least theoretically, it’s rare science can be laughed at, so I’m taking the opportunity where I can. I’m not saying these ideas are crazy, but, well, you decide. The latest one here is for a process called starlifting to occur. Apparently, this involves siphoning off part of the Sun’s hydrogen, via - wait for it - an ionised particle beam which he’s decided to call a hydro cannon - and aiming it at Venus. This is supposed to do two things: thin the dense atmosphere and introduce hydrogen into the atmosphere, which will then react with the carbon dioxide and create h20. Okay. And they let this guy out on his own? No, seriously, I’m asking.

Taking the air - literally!

Even our buddy Carl Sagan has been at it. First he proposed, early in the sixties, introducing genetically engineered biological life forms into Venus’s atmosphere which would convert the carbon dioxide into carbon, but that idea was shot down. He admitted the plan was predicated on insufficient data, as the Enterprise computer was often fond of saying, in his book Pale Blue Dot, published thirty years later:

“Here’s the fatal flaw: In 1961, I thought the atmospheric pressure at the surface of Venus was a few bars … We now know it to be 90 bars, so if the scheme worked, the result would be a surface buried in hundreds of meters of fine graphite, and an atmosphere made of 65 bars of almost pure molecular oxygen. Whether we would first implode under the atmospheric pressure or spontaneously burst into flames in all that oxygen is open to question. However, long before so much oxygen could build up, the graphite would spontaneously burn back into CO2, short-circuiting the process.”

Yeah, Carl: I don’t think we’re too bothered about whether we implode or burst into flames. We’d prefer to do neither, thanks.

Then he had the idea to smash asteroids into the planet so as to shake the atmosphere off the planet. I guess that wouldn’t work with most planets, as they have a strong enough magnetic field to retain their atmosphere, but Venus’s is really really weak. Cartoon-like though, it was realised that if they didn’t hit the planet hard enough and with enough asteroids the atmosphere might just hang around in space and then drift back down onto the planet. What a waste! The planet could even regenerate its lost atmosphere through a process called outgassing, apparently.

And hey: let’s not forget that a mere few tens of millions of kilometres away is a planet we all know and love, and personally, the idea of bouncing bloody great rocks off our nearest neighbour in an attempt to get it to do a Taylor Swift and shake it off worries me. What if one bounced our direction? D’oh! We’re talking about rocks at least 700 km across - that’s like twice the size of Vienna - and not just one. They reckon it would take two thousand impacts! With that many asteroids of that size, can you really expect one or two not to go off-course and head our way? “Hey, it didn’t work, but look on the bright side: at least we flattened Jersey!”

I, uh, I don’t think his elevator goes all the way to the top floor, if you know what I mean!

Oh yeah, they’re real, at least hypothetically. Space elevators. Sounds like something out of science fiction, but here’s the deal. A cable is anchored to the planet and out into space, where, um, competing gravitational forces apparently hold it up, and then vehicles can travel along the cable, up and out of the atmosphere and into space. Are you shitting me? Would any of us even consider such a mode of transportation? You know what happens when one of those cable cars in Switzerland goes down, right? Well as it happens we would need this magic cable to be made out of a super-strong material which does not yet exist, so don’t get your space-climbing boots on just yet! And as a solution for Venus, it’s out even if we had the materials, due to the thickness of the atmosphere and the height of the planet’s geostationary orbit. Uh-huh.

Then there’s the space fountain. I am being serious! Listen, a tower created by a space fountain might work, it says here. Pellets are shot upwards in a stream to a ground station abo - what? I have no idea what kind of pellets, though I doubt they’re the type you load your BB gun with. Don’t ask stupid questions while I’m outlining a stupid idea. Well it sounds stupid, but what do I know? Anyway where was I? Oh yeah. The stream of pellets is directed downwards from the station at the top (I don’t know how! Didn’t I ask you to stop asking questions? Here, have some jelly babies) and, so it says, “the necessary force for this deflection supports the structure at the top and the payloads going up”. Sure it does. Will. Would. Might. Oh look! The downside is apparently that if the containment fails and the stream breaks you’re SOL. All I can say is I wouldn’t want to be using one of these space fountains during space rush hour. Or, you know, ever. If I want to leave this planet, I’ll do it the old-fashioned way, in a rocket ship. Or by getting high. Or reading a book.

The future’s so bright I gotta wear shades

Solar shades sound like something a planet might wear to look cool, but in fact they are proposed actual parasols in space that would, I guess, presumably be mounted on a satellite? I don’t know, I’m in the dark here (pun!) but the idea is pretty simple at its core (other, less immediately obvious pun), in that the shade thrown on Venus by these parasols (presumably again there’d have to be a lot of them, or they’d have to be really big) would reduce the heat and therefore cool down the planet. Placed in the correct position (no I am not going to use the proper scientific designation, that’s not what we’re about here) it could also deflect the radiation from the sun and block the solar wind.

And now it gets funny.

The proposed size of this theoretical shade is, wait for it, four times the size of Venus itself. But that’s not the best part, oh no. If left to itself without supervision, the thing is expected to act as a solar sail, and just bugger off on its merry way, leaving Venus unshaded and NASA seriously out of pocket with no result to show for all that expenditure. So to prevent this rather embarrassing but certainly amusing accident from occurring, the idea is to either make it an artificial, controlled satellite, or staitite (I guess a portmanteau of static and satellite?) or - and here we’re back to mirrors again - install huge mirrors at the poles which could reflect the light back at the rear of the solar panel and balance them, keeping them in orbit.

Float, float on…

Ah, we’re finally dealing with those floating cities which occasioned so much mirth a while back. Yes, it’s true. If we can’t live at the top of miles-high mountains we can just drift about like those guys in Gulliver’s Travels, or like the drifting never-ending party in The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Or even like those, well, floating cities in Star Trek. Here’s the supposed hard science, though for my money there’s a fiction missing at the end, and possibly even a humorous before it.

Human-breathable air is a lifting gas (as those of you who read my Aviation journal, particularly the section on the history of ballooning, will know, early balloons were filled with simple oxygen before others got around to using hydrogen and then helium) and in Venus’s dense carbon dioxide-rich air would provide sixty percent of the lifting power of helium back home. Venus is a beautiful planet - until you hit the tops of the clouds on the way down. It’s just the surface, the atmosphere, the clouds, all that area, that’s shitty. If we could live - to quote the title of again my aviation journal - above the clouds, we’d be laughing. Well, I’d be laughing that’s for sure.

So, cities drifting along lazily at an altitude of about fifty kilometres above the ground, inhabitants enjoying both the Earthlike atmosphere and temperatures ranging from 0 to 50 C would only have to worry about those pesky winds I mentioned, which blow every four or five days around the planet at a speed of up to 340 kph. Right. For some reason, the eggheads don’t seem to think this is a problem. I personally wonder what it would be like to look out of your apartment window into the clear blue sky and say “wind’s not bad today! Only 300 kph!” as your best friend goes sailing by, madly hanging on to his smaller apartment. Also, how are you supposed to eat while up there? Where is anything going to grow? What about cattle and livestock? Would they adjust to being permanently in the air?

Look, I’m just going to copy/paste these paragraphs from Wiki. Note the first is headed “advantages”. (Bolded text is added by me).

[i]Advantages

Because there is not a significant pressure difference between the inside and the outside of the breathable-air balloon, any rips or tears would cause gases to diffuse at normal atmospheric mixing rates rather than an explosive decompression, giving time to repair any such damages.[11] In addition, humans would not require pressurized suits when outside, merely air to breathe, protection from the acidic rain and on some occasions low level protection against heat. Alternatively, two-part domes could contain a lifting gas like hydrogen or helium (extractable from the atmosphere) to allow a higher mass density.[14] Therefore, putting on or taking off suits for working outside would be easier. Working outside the vehicle in non-pressurized suits would also be easier.[15]

Remaining problems

Structural and industrial materials would be hard to retrieve from the surface and expensive to bring from Earth/asteroids. The sulfuric acid itself poses a further challenge in that the colony would need to be constructed of or coated in materials resistant to corrosion by the acid, such as PTFE (a compound consisting wholly of carbon and fluorine).

Yeah. I don’t see not having to wear a spacesuit to go to the shops or football practice or the office necessarily an advantage, guy? And to categorise the fact that “any rips or tears” won’t explode the balloon? Um, isn’t this damning with faint praise? Shouldn’t they be saying there is no possibility of rips or tears? I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but if I’m living in a city carried around on a potentially hostile, even deadly planet by fucking balloons, I really don’t want to hear the words rip, tear or christfuck explosive decompression! And under “Remaining problems” (as if those weren’t enough) we have two words which, again, nobody floating around in a balloon wants to consider: sulphuric acid. Sulphuric acid that falls from the clouds in showers of rain. All in all, I’d take my chances on the ground, thanks.

So, who’s first to sign up for the wonderful Floating Balloon City on Venus? Anyone? Hello? Hello?

By the way, as an aside, you have to give it to NASA. Setting up a study to examine the feasibility of an atmospheric crewed mission to Venus, they called it the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept. That’s right: HAVOC. Is there something wrong with these people, or have they just all got a twisted and warped sense of humour? Havoc? Why not call it Operation Doom while they’re at it?

[Trollheart]

Back down to Earth, or I should say, Venus: it’s time for those specs again!

Distance from the Sun: 107,000,000 km
Distance from Earth: 233,000,000 km
Mass: 0.815 Earths
Volume: 0.857 Earths
Surface Gravity: 0.9g
Pressure: 92 Atmospheres (ATM)
Satellites: None
Axial tilt: 2.64 degrees
Temperature: 464 degrees C
Length of day: 244 Earth days
Length of year: 227 Earth days
Atmosphere: almost entirely Carbon Dioxide

Probes sent

It should be noted for posterity and accuracy that in 1961 Russia - then the Soviet Union, or USSR - made two unsuccessful attempts to send probes to Venus, one of which exploded on the launch pad, the other of which did make its destination but had a catastrophic failure and was unable to send back any data. The US also tried with Mariner 1 in 1962, but this failed to achieve orbit and was destroyed, while the Russians gave it one more go literally two days before the launch of the second US attempt (which ended up being successful), but again the orbiter malfunctioned and this third attempt was also a failure, allowing the hated Americans to get there first. Maybe they saw it as revenge for Sputnik.

Russia would try a total of eight more times between 1962 and 1967, and rather interestingly finally succeed in launching its ninth probe two days before the next American one (there had been no further missions by the USA in the interim, possibly due to Vietnam?) and arriving in Venusian orbit literally one day ahead of it.

Note also that due to the fact that the Cold War was freezing both superpowers, and trust was at a minimum between them, information about the Soviet space programme was seriously and jealously guarded, and so the details we have here on their probes to Venus may be a little sketchy, but they’re all I could find.

Mariner 2

Launched: August 1962
Reached Destination: December 1962
Type: Flyby
Nationality: American
Results: Measured the temperature of Venus, confirmed no real variance across the surface of the planet, also studied the solar wind, thickness of Venus’s atmosphere, clouds. Mass estimated, confirmation of its rotating clockwise and its speed, and updated information on the astronomical unit size.
Photographs taken: None (No camera on board)
Mission ended: 1963
Termination of probe: n/a; still in heliocentric orbit (orbit around the Sun)

Venera 4

Launched: June 12 1967
Reached Destination: October 18 1967
Type: Atmospheric Entry
Nationality: Soviet (Russian)
Results: Analysis (for the first time) of Venus’s atmosphere while within that atmosphere, measurements of the weakness of the magnetic field, confirmation (at the time - almost more educated speculation really) of the absence of water.
Photographs Taken: None
Mission Ended: October 18 1967
Termination of Probe: Crashed on surface

Mariner 5

Launched: June 14 1967
Reached Destination: October 19 1967
Type: Flyby
Nationality: American
Results: Analysis of the atmosphere, temperature, magnetic field
Photographs Taken: None
Mission Ended: October 14 1968 (technically, December 4 1967, after which contact was lost but re-established briefly in 1968)
Termination of Probe: Remains in heliocentric orbit

Venera 5

Launched: January 5 1969
Reached Destination: May 16 1969
Type: Lander
Nationality: Soviet (Russian)
Results: Confirmed temperature, pressure and atmospheric readings sent back by Venera 4; was the first man-made probe to land on Venus.
Photographs Taken: None
Mission Ended: May 16 1969
Termination of Probe: Crushed on the surface of Venus less than an hour after landing, due to the immense atmospheric pressure.

Venera 6

Launched: January 10 1969
Reached Destination: May 17 1969
Type: Atmospheric
Nationality: Soviet (Russian)
Results: Sent back data on samples taken from the atmosphere
Photographs Taken: None
Mission Ended: May 17 1969
Termination of Probe: Crushed on the surface, like its predecessor

Venera 7

Launched: August 17 1970
Reached Destination: December 15 1970
Type: Lander
Nationality: Soviet (Russian)
Results: Further information on the composition of Venus’s atmosphere, surface temperature and for the first time, weak but definite signals confirming the planet has a solid surface and that there is (or was thought at the time) no water there. On landing, the vehicle seems to have fallen on its side, which scrambled the data it was sending back. This is thought to have been due to initial partial, and then complete failure of its descent parachute, leading to a harder landing than anticipated. Nevertheless, Venera 7 attained the distinction of being the first man-made probe to land safely on another planet.
Photographs Taken: None
Mission Ended: December 15 1970
Termination of Probe: Probably shut down on the surface and likely crushed flat.

Venera 8

Launched: March 27 1972
Reached Destination: July 22 1972
Type: Lander
Nationality: Soviet (Russian)
Results: Confirmed the temperature and pressure readings of its predecessor, noted that the cloud cover did not extend far down to the surface, and from beneath the clouds the atmosphere was relatively clear. Also determined that the light on the surface would be conducive to the taking of photographs. Venera 8 became the first ever man-made probe to land successfully on another planet.
Photographs Taken: None
Mission Ended: July 22 1972
Termination of Probe: Crushed on the surface, again.

Mariner 10

Launched: November 3 1973
Reached Destination: February 4 1974 (before moving on to Mercury, its primary target)
Type: Flyby
Nationality: American
Results: Mariner 10, though really intended as a probe to study Mercury, as we have seen in the article on that planet, became the first probe to send actual photographs back, though they were of course only from a flyby and so not very detailed. It was however able to photograph for the first time the clouds that cover Venus, and other instruments analysed the composition both of the clouds and the atmosphere itself.
Photographs Taken: 4,165
Mission Ended: February 13 1974 (for the Venus part of the mission - March 24 1975 for the full mission)
Termination of Probe: In heliocentric orbit

Venera 9

Launched: June 8 1975
Reached Destination: October 20 1975
Type: Orbiter/Lander
Nationality: Soviet (Russian)
Results: Took photographs for the first time of the surface of Venus, confirmed the light was about the same as Earth but without any direct sunshine due to the thick clouds above. Measured the atmosphere, pressure, the composition of the clouds and the surface temperature.
Photographs Taken: Yes, but number unknown (those secretive Russians!) :rolleyes:
Mission Ended: October 22 1975 (Lander) / March 22 1976 (Orbiter)
Termination of Probe: Unknown

Venera 10

Note: tensions were so high during the Cold War, and each of the superpowers (USA and USSR) trusted the other so little that when this probe was launched, the Soviet Union claimed it was only an orbiter, though a lander was also attached. Western sources assumed they were lying, and as it turned out, they were.

Launched: June 14 1975
Reached Destination: October 26 1975
Type: Orbiter/Lander
Nationality: Soviet (Russian)
Results: Measured surface windspeed, atmosphere, temperature and took more photographs of the surface of Venus.
Photographs Taken: Yes, but number unknown
Mission Ended: Believed to be June 1976
Termination of Probe: Unknown

[Trollheart]

Venera 11

Launched: September 9 1978
Reached Destination: December 25 1978
Type: Flyby/Lander
Nationality: Soviet (Russian)
Results: Catalogued gamma-ray bursts for the first time; studied the temperature, soil and atmospheric composition (soil analyser failed however), detected lightning on Venus for the first time.
Photographs Taken: Unknown
Mission Ended: February 1980
Termination of Probe: In heliocentric orbit

Venera 12

Launched: September 14 1978
Reached Destination: December 21 1978
Type: Flyby/Lander
Nationality: Soviet (Russian)
Results: Observed more gamma-ray bursts, analysed composition of the atmosphere, thermal balance and the nature of the clouds.
Photographs Taken: None; both cameras failed to operate on landing.
Mission Ended: April 1980
Termination of Probe: In heliocentric orbit

Pioneer Venus 1

Launched: May 20 1978
Reached Destination: December 4 1978
Type: Orbiter
Nationality: American
Results: Mapped the surface with radar, investigated the distribution of the clouds, the composition of the atmosphere, infra-red emissions, measured the magnetic field and the solar wind, monitored gamma-ray bursts. Also observed Halley’s Comet from orbit around Venus.
Photographs Taken: None
Mission Ended: October 22 1992
Termination of Probe: Burned up in Venus’s atmosphere after its orbit decayed

Pioneer Venus 2

Note: this was the first hybrid or multi-probe, containing five separate components - four probes and the spacecraft that carried them. The probes were dropped into Venus’s atmosphere without parachutes, recording as they descended. They were not intended nor designed to survive the impact on the surface, though one did.

Launched: August 8 1978
Reached Destination: December 9 1978
Type: Atmospheric
Nationality: American
Results: Determined the nature of the solar wind, the development of the atmosphere, measured distribution of infra-red radiation
Photographs Taken: None
Mission Ended: December 9 1978
Termination of Probe: Destroyed on impact (3 probes); fourth one presumably crushed on the surface

Venera 13

Launched: October 31 1981
Reached Destination: March 1 1982
Type: Flyby/Lander
Nationality: Soviet (Russian)
Results: Took soil samples and analysed them; first ever recordings from another planet as the probe was fitted with microphones.
Photographs Taken: Yes, but number unknown. They appear to have been possibly the first ones in colour, too.
Mission Ended: March 1 1982
Termination of Probe: Again, unsure but presumably crushed by the pressures on Venus’s surface.

Here’s a hilarious little story. Seems some of the Russian scientists got really excited when the cameras from the lander picked up what they described as “a disc, a black flap and a scorpion (!) which emerge, fluctuate and disappear” on the photographs. Engineers later shook their heads wryly and said, “they’re just the discarded lens caps from the cameras blowing in the Venusian wind, comrade!”

Venera 14

Launched: November 4 1981
Reached Destination: March 5 1982
Type: Flyby/Lander
Nationality: Soviet (Russian)
Results: Pretty much the same as Venera 13 (it landed only 4 days after it, and was more or less identical).
Photographs Taken: Yes, but number unknown
Mission Ended: March 16 1983 (orbiter)
Termination of Probe: Crushed on the planet

Another funny story (and you don’t expect many of them to come out of the cold, hardline, humourless regime of the Soviet Union in the early 1980s): when the lander tried to measure the compressibility of the soil, it accidentally instead focussed on the discarded lens caps from the cameras (oh, those lens caps again!) which had popped off and fell beside its measuring arm. Oops!

Venera 15

Launched: June 2 1983
Reached Destination: October 10 1983
Type: Orbiter
Nationality: Soviet (Russian)
Results: Nothing exciting; a few experiments carried out with radar and imaging.
Photographs Taken: Unknown
Mission Ended: January 5 1985
Termination of Probe: Unknown

Venera 16

Launched: June 7 1983
Reached Destination: October 11 1983
Type: Orbiter
Nationality: Soviet (Russian)
Results: Identical to Venera 15, which preceded it into Venus orbit by one day. Yawnski.
Photographs Taken: Unknown
Mission Ended: July 1984
Termination of Probe: Unknown

Vega 1

Launched: December 15 1984
Reached Destination: June 11 1985
Type: Flyby/Atmospheric/Lander
Nationality: Soviet (Russian)
Results: Not much, due to high turbulence on the planet
Photographs Taken: None*
Mission Ended: January 13 1987
Termination of Probe: Orbiter in heliocentric orbit still; descent craft likely crushed, and a balloon capsule could still be merrily drifting through the lower atmosphere, for all we know. Or it may have burst, or crashed.

Note: after completing its mission on Venus, the orbiter headed off to take a butcher’s at Halley’s Comet.

* Because they landed at night, but apparently the probe took 700 shots of Halley’s Comet.

Vega 2

Launched: December 21 1984
Reached Destination: June 13 1985
Type: Flyby/Atmospheric/Lander
Nationality: Soviet (Russian)
Results: As Vega 1
Photographs Taken: None*
Mission Ended: March 24 1987
Termination of Probe: In, you guessed it, heliocentric orbit

Magellan

Launched: May 4 1989
Reached Destination: October 10 1990
Type: Orbiter
Nationality: American
Results: Mostly mapping of the surface of the planet, which, with new high-resolution cameras was discovered to be volcanic, relatively young, with no plate tectonics or wind erosion.
Photographs Taken: Yes, but number unknown
Mission Ended: October 13 1994
Termination of Probe: Crashed on Venusian surface

Note: Magellan was both the first return to exploration of space by America in eleven years (while the Russkies got well ahead of them) and the first to be launched from the new Space Shuttles, this one being carried on Atlantis.

[Trollheart]

Galileo

Launched: October 18 1989
Reached Destination: February 10 1990 (when I say destination I mean of course Venus, though this probe was on its way much further out of the solar system, heading for Jupiter)
Type: Gravity assist
Nationality: American
Results: Not really sure; it only flew by Venus, and its main objective was Jupiter, so there isn’t much about what, if anything, it did as it passed the second planet from the sun.
Photographs Taken: Unknown but probably none
Mission Ended: September 21 2003
Termination of Probe: Crashed into Jupiter

Cassini

Launched: October 15 1997
Reached Destination: April 26 1998 (as above; main destination was Saturn)
Type: Orbiter
Nationality: American
Results: None; seems to have used Venus, and Earth, as slingshots to get to Saturn.
Photographs Taken: None
Mission Ended: September 15 2017
Termination of Probe: Crashed into Saturn

MESSENGER

Launched: August 3 2004
Reached Destination: (as in, Venus) October 24 2006. Performed two flybys, a second on June 5 2007
Type: Gravity assist
Nationality: American
Results: Original flyby, nothing, as the position of the Sun inhibited radio communications. Atmosphere of Venus was imaged and studied on second flyby.
Photographs Taken: Yes, but number unknown
Mission Ended: April 30 2015
Termination of Probe: Crashed into Mercury

Venus Express

Launched: November 9 2005
Reached Destination: April 11 2006
Type: Orbiter
Nationality: European
Results: Longest - at that time - continuous study of the atmosphere of Venus from orbit. Original mission covering 500 days extended five times. Global maps made of the surface temperatures, surface characteristics of the planet studied as well as the plasma environment. First ever European space probe. Ozone layer detected, as well as cold areas in the atmosphere where it is postulated ice may form.
Photographs Taken: Yes, but number unknown
Mission Ended: December 16 2014
Termination of Probe: Crashed into Venus.

Akatsuki

Launched: May 20 2010
Reached Destination: December 6 2010, but failed to achieve orbit. Was eventually sorted December 7 2015.
Type: Orbiter
Nationality: Japanese
Results: After a five-year wait, the probe, the first ever Asian and first ever Japanese mission, finally achieved orbit in 2015. Akatsuki began observing cloud and surface of Venus, as well as its weather, and to investigate the claims of lightning there. Gravity wave detected in the winds above Aphrodite Terra, one of the two highland plains. Released the experimental solar sail IKAROS.
Photographs Taken: yes, but number unknown
Mission Ended: Still active
Termination of Probe: n/a

IKAROS

Launched: May 20 2010
Reached Destination: December 8 2010
Type: Flyby
Nationality: Japanese
Results: None, other than it’s the world’s first ever solar space sail!
Photographs Taken: None
Mission Ended: Still active
Termination of Probe: n/a

Shin’en

Launched: May 20 2010
Reached Destination: December 2010
Type: Flyby
Nationality: Japanese
Results: None; spacecraft failed after launch and though it flew by Venus, no communication has been possible
Photographs Taken: Unknown
Mission Ended: n/a
Termination of Probe: n/a

An interesting and unique experiment, Shin’en was a joint project between Japanese universities and I guess, certainly in terms of Venus anyway, was the first space probe launched which was not under the control of or financed by a national government. It was to be used to test the robustness, or otherwise, of computers built by the University, but contact was lost very quickly and now it’s probably up there, looking for someone to transmit data to.

Okay, wait what? I don’t get this. It says the dimensions of the probe are about a foot square, and this structure carries a payload of SIX computers? How small can those guys make the things? Answers on a postcard please…

Parker Solar Probe

Launched: August 12 2018
Reached Destination: October 10 2018
Type: Gravity assist
Nationality: American
Results: None; it seems to be another using Venus as a slingshot to get somewhere else, this time the Sun. It’s enough to give a young planet an inferiority complex!
Photographs Taken: None
Mission Ended: Still active
Termination of Probe: n/a

BepiColumbo

Launched: October 20 2018
Reached Destination: October 15 2020 (Venus, on the way to Mercury)
Type: Gravity assist
Nationality: Japanese/European
Results: None as yet; possibility of detecting phosphine
Photographs Taken: None
Mission Ended: Still active
Termination of Probe: n/a

This would appear to be the first ever collaboration between two continents, Asia and Europe, in space exploration; certainly the first involving Mercury, which is where the probe is headed. It’s expected to flyby Venus again in August of this year (2021) and arrive at Mercury sometime in October.

Solar Orbiter

Launched: February 10 2020
Reached Destination: December 2020 (Venus)
Type: Gravity assist
Nationality: European
Results: None; it’s a solar probe
Photographs Taken: None
Mission Ended: Still active
Termination of Probe: n/a

And that’s it for our exploration of Venus so far. No less than six probes are in development between 2023 and 2030, the first of these being a private US concern, then there’s one from India, one from Russia (no longer the Soviet Union, and seeming to have abandoned its observations of Venus since the original glut in the last half of the twentieth century) and another European one, with NASA chafing to get theirs into orbit too. Beyond that, a total of nine proposed missions, some only in the drawing board stage, are being looked at, all except one being NASA’s baby, including one intended to be the first rover on Venus.

It should in all fairness be pointed out that though Americans believe their country the best in the world (well, some of them do) the Russians, or at least the Soviet Union have them beat in space on almost all fronts. Leaving Sputnik aside, ignoring Yuri Gagarin’s historic feat, look at the probes they sent to Venus. They were the first to land on another planet, the first to send back pictures of the surface, the first to record sound, the first to send back colour pictures, the first to observe gamma-ray bursts, the first to observe lightning, the first to confirm Venus even had a solid surface. Oh yeah, it’s all down to the Russkies.

To be fair, there weren’t too many surprises for me with Venus. I’ve read and heard a lot about it, and most of the information is reasonably current, so while I learned new stuff about it of course in going into detail about it, I didn’t have the kind of revelation I had with Mercury, about which I knew little prior to researching it. I was intrigued by the ideas for terraforming it, sure, but that’s not quite the same. So as far as familiarity is concerned, I think I knew Venus quite well.

And now it’s time to engage the ion engines and move on.

Harmless.

Hey, what did you expect? I’m not going to spend time describing your own planet to you, the one on which you’ve lived all your life! If you want to know more about Earth, get off your arse and go explore it. You don’t need a spaceship for that. Oh, very well.

Happy? No? Tough. Look, we’re only making a brief stop-off here so that Marie can feed her cat and ISB can check his servers. And those of you who have to use the zero-G toilet can you PLEASE get it right? I am tired of encountering floating turds in the air every time I walk in. Read the manual. Thanks.

Right, our brief return to our homeworld over, it’s time to - where is Dianne? Did anyone see… oh, there you are. Didn’t you see there at the back. Right, is everyone here? Let’s head off then. We’re about to encounter our first ever moon. And you know what it’s called?
Yeah.
The Moon.