Earth-Venus-Mars

Venus, Earth, and Mars are approximately at the same distance from the Sun. This means they formed
out of the same material and had approximately the same initial temperatures 4.6 billion years ago.
Long ago these three planets probably had moderate enough temperatures suitable for life. However,
Venus is now much too hot for life and Mars is too cold for life. What happened to these two planets
and why are they so different from the comparative paradise here on Earth? This section explores
these three planets in more detail in order to answer this important question and what it might say for
the future of the Earth.

Venus

Venus' cloudtops in UV (left) and Venus' surface imaged with radar (right).

Venus is about 95% the size of the Earth and has 82% of the Earth's mass. Like the Earth, Venus has a
rocky crust and iron-nickel core. But the similarities stop there. Venus has a thick atmosphere made of
96% carbon dioxide (CO2), 3.5% nitrogen (N2), and 0.5% other gases. Venus' ever-present clouds are
made of sulfuric acid droplets between 45 and 66 km above the surface. It is those clouds that
continually block our view of Venus' surface, so we must use radar imaging (bouncing radio waves
off its hard surface) to "see through" the clouds. Between the equator and about 55 degrees
latitude the lower clouds in Venus' atmosphere move at about 210 km/h and the uppermost clouds
move much faster at 370 km/h. Near the poles, the winds are weaker and do not change with height
because of the huge hurricane-like vortex that exists there. At the center of the vortex, there are no
winds. Close to the surface, the winds are also essentially non-existent.

At Venus' surface, the air pressure is 92 times the Earth's surface atmospheric pressure. Venus' surface
atmospheric pressure is the same as what you would feel if you were 1 kilometer below the ocean
surface on the Earth. The deepest free-divers can get down to around 160 meters (and divers breathing
special mixtures of gases can get down to 730 meters). If you want to send someone to Venus, that
person would need to be in something like a diving bell.

Surface of Venus from the Venera 13 lander on March 3, 1982. Note the flat basaltic rocks that are
still sharp and un-eroded. The spacecraft edge is at the bottom right corner of the image. The view
extends out to the horizon at the top left corner of the image. The shiny piece on the middle right is
the camera cover. Venera 13 lasted for 127 minutes before the extreme heat overcame the electronics.

Besides being in a diving bell, the Venus explorer would also need a very powerful cooling system:
the surface temperature is 737 K (= 477° C)! This is hot enough to melt lead and is over twice as hot
as it would be if Venus did not have an atmosphere. Why does Venus have such a thick atmosphere
and why is it so hot on its surface? Venus is so hot because of a huge greenhouse effect that prevents
heat from escaping to space. On Venus, the super-abundance of CO2 in its atmosphere is responsible
for the huge greenhouse effect. Why is Venus' CO2 all in its atmosphere while most of the
Earth's CO2 is locked up in its sediments? Earth has some 35 to 50 entire Earth atmospheres worth of
carbon dioxide in the form of carbonates. Venus' greenhouse effect probably started from the presence
of a lot of water vapor, but Venus is now a very dry place.

Mars

Mars is about half the diameter of the Earth and has 1/10th the Earth's mass. Mars' thin atmosphere
(just 1/100th the Earth's) does not trap much heat at all even though it is 95% carbon dioxide (CO2).
The other 3% is nitrogen (N2). Because the atmosphere is so thin, the greenhouse effect is
insignificant and Mars has rapid cooling between night and day. When night comes the temperature
can drop by over 100 K (180° F)! The large temperature differences create strong winds. The strong
winds whip up dust and within a few weeks time, they can make dust storms that cover the entire
planet for a few months. Two "before-after" image sets are shown below. The first pair is from the
Mars Global Surveyor of the Tharsis bulge side of the planet. The "before-after" images are about 1.5
months apart. The second pair is from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) of the other side of the
planet. The "before-after" images are about 2.5 months apart and the truly global dust storm was still
going on. You can see the dust storm beginning in the HST image in the left image in the Hellas Basin
at about the 4 o'clock position.

Earth

Our home planet, the Earth, is the largest of the terrestrial planets with a diameter of 12,742
kilometers and a mass of 5.9736 × 1024 kilograms. It has moderately-thick atmosphere that is 78%
nitrogen (N2) and 21% oxygen (O2). Although the atmosphere makes up less than 0.0001% of the
Earth's mass, it is a very important component. The Earth has the right surface temperature and
atmospheric pressure for life and liquid water on the surface to exist. It is the only place that has either
of these things. Some water is also in the form of water vapor and ice. The total amount of water on
the Earth (in all phases) is about 0.023% of the Earth's mass---the Earth is primarily rock and iron.
The Earth is also a very beautiful place.

Free Oxygen

Compared to the other planets, the Earth has a bizarre atmosphere! The presence of free oxygen (O2)
is very unusual because oxygen loves to chemically react with other atoms and molecules. The
oxygen in our atmosphere would soon disappear (within about 5000 years) if photosynthesizing
organisms like plants and cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) did not regenerate the oxygen. In the
process ofphotosynthesis, plants take in water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight and convert them to
carbohydrates and oxygen. The oxygen is given off as a waste product and the carbohydrates are
stored as a source of energy to be used later by the plants. Since life keeps oxygen in the form
of O2 and its fragile cousin, ozone (O3) around, absorption lines of these two molecules in the
spectrum of a planet beyond our solar system would be one signature of life on that planet. Ozone has
a spectral signature in the infrared---the spectral band where a search for bio-markers would take
place.
Liquid Water
Most of the Earth's water is liquid and some is frozen. The rest that is water vapor works with carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere to create a small greenhouse effect, raising the surface temperature about
34° C. This natural greenhouse effect makes it warm enough on the surface for liquid water to
exist. Besides making life possible, the liquid water also helps to keep the amount of atmospheric
carbon dioxide from getting too high. Carbon dioxide dissolves in liquid water to form "carbonic
acid" (soda water). Some of the dissolved carbon dioxide will combine with minerals in the water and
settle to the ocean floor to form limestone. A similar process happens with the weathering process.
Carbon dioxide dissolved in rainwater (and in snowmelt) combines with minerals eroded away from
the mountains to carry carbonates down to the oceans. The amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide is
also kept in check by biological processes.
Venus, Earth, and Mars
Most people, when they think of a "planet", imagine a large roundish body with a rocky
surface and an atmosphere, just the kind that cool science fiction stories are written about.
Forgetting Pluto for a moment (which has too many issues to deal with here),
only Venus, Earth, and Mars share these characteristics as planets in our solar system.
When astronomers think about planets, they generally divide them into two distinctive
groups, the inner or "terrestrial" planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) and the outer
or "jovian" planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune). Pluto is a bit of an outlier, and
generally considered a KBO or Kuiper Belt Object or TNO (Trans-Neptunian Object),
referring to its probable origins outside the orbit of Neptune in a region where comets are
thought to form.

The inner planets all reside within about 250 million km from the sun. They are relatively
small in size with radii ranging from 2440 km for Mercury to 6378 km for Earth, and they
generally rotate very slowly (242 days for Venus to 24 hours for Earth). They have rocky
(or silicate-based) surfaces that you could land on or walk on with the proper space suit
gear. They also have dense inner cores composed primarily of heavy elements like iron
and nickel. Except for Mercury, they have substantial atmospheres containing clouds,
water vapor, carbon dioxide, and other trace gases. Contrast this with the outer planets.

The outer planets are, well, in the outer part of the solar system with orbital distances of
greater than 750 million km. They are much larger than their inner planet cousins with radii
ranging from between four to 11 times that of Earth. Unlike the inner planets, they are
composed primarily of very light gasses dominated by molecular hydrogen (H2) and helium
(He), with rich mixtures of a variety of hydrocarbon and nitrile molecules such as methane
and ammonia. These planets are huge balls of gas and condensed gasses (clouds) that
rotate quite fast for their large size (9.5 hours for Jupiter to 17.24 hours for Uranus) -
driving the fastest winds in the solar system. If you were to try to land on one of these gas
giants, you would sink through denser and denser layers of gas until you were crushed by
the atmospheric pressure, never to reach an actual solid surface at all! In addition, they all
have complex ring systems, a relatively large number of moons due primarily to their larger
gravitational fields and large, and extensive magnetic fields.

Focusing now just on Earth and its closest neighbors, we can compare just the three
terrestrial planets, Venus, Earth, and Mars, and we find that, although they have many
things in common as we just mentioned, they are also worlds apart in many equally
important respects.