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| Venus with her veil of cloud off |
Venus has virtually no magnetic field, no moon, no erosion and slowly rotates in reverse (with a tilt of 177.36 degrees from perpendicular), taking 243 Earth days to complete the rotation, even longer than the 224.7 days to orbit. Apparently this means that every time the Earth gets close, Venus shows her same dark side.
How rude, but how intriguing!
Venus and Earth are synchronized!
If you’re lucky enough to find this amazing fact in a rare textbook, it’s dismissed as an inexplicable coincidence or at a long shot...perhaps gravitational effect by Earth.
Does that sound like a 'Big Bang' job to you?
Just how much do Earth and Venus really have in common anyway?
Venus is nearly the same size - only 6% smaller, seems to be made of the same materials with 81.5% of Earth's mass, and has a nicely balanced near-circular orbit. With Venus being named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty it sure sounds like a good resort to visit or colonize, but before you book your tickets, how about checking the climate there first. The temperature is about 460 degrees Celsius (~900 F), the air is 96.5% carbon dioxide at a crushing pressure equivalent to 1 km ocean depth, it rains sulphuric acid, oh and by the way, there might be total cloud cover but there's no water.
Venus is not ‘Earth-like’ after all. Let's just call her unique - one of a kind. This beauty might be ‘wrinkle-free’, veiled and seductive but she has an intensely hostile air about her and dates with her are very disappointing. Is she dangerous?
She even destroys space probes.
Well if we’re going to talk about Venus crossing the Sun we’d better find out what Venus is like, don’t you think? Not only do we find out that Venus is not really like Earth but they are synchronised!....how inconvenient – it must be 'just a coincidence’.
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