Читать книгу Planets and stars. The History of almost Everything - Lim Word - Страница 5

Acceleration of free fall at the equator (gravity) is 0.9 terrestrial. The period of revolution around its own axis is 225 terrestrial days. The radius is 6052 km. The atmosphere consists almost entirely of carbon dioxide, clouds of sulfuric acid vapor are floating in the atmosphere. Atmospheric pressure is 92 terrestrial. In practice, a gas whose density is equal to 7% of the density of water is already some kind of liquid.

The temperature on the lower surface of such a gaseous ocean is 460 degrees Celsius. The atmosphere of Venus is involved in continuous circular motion. A complete revolution around the planet of a mass of carbon dioxide, at an altitude of 10—50 km. having a speed of about 100 ms. (at the surface – 1 ms) are performed in four days.

In the distant past, perhaps, Venus was quite suitable for inhabiting the known protein forms of life, the heavenly body. The maximum temperature on the surface reached barely 80 degrees Celsius, the atmosphere is rather sparse and transparent. However, a planetary catastrophe – a collision with a large asteroid or comet, perhaps the loss of a huge satellite – become a single planet, Mercury (there is such a version), all this changes. The morning star in one far from perfect moment changes the direction of movement around its axis, enveloped in a dense, corrosive atmosphere. Life, if it has ever been there, ceases.

Everything can be and not so bad. The photographic cameras of the Soviet probe «Venus», which produce images for one and a half hours (while the station was still «living») showed an interesting anomaly. Stones of a characteristic elongated shape, a few minutes after the loud landing of the apparatus, revealed themselves, as if bold oysters of the earth.

Whether this is so, or the appearance of cracks in the stones – a play of light and imagination, will clarify only further instrumental research.

Poetry:

(Nikolay Gumilev)

Venus, view of the Earth’s telescope

Venus, the surface according to the infrared spectrometer of the European probe «Galileo».

The surface of Venus (probes «Venus-9» and «Venus-10.»)

The reconstructed image of the surface of Venus