What If Part 1

 

March 5, 2021

On this day in 1982, the Venera 13 arrived on the planet Venus, having launched in 1981. It spent four months travelling through space before reaching its destination. The Venera 13 spacecraft, launched by Russia, survived for 127 minutes on Venus’s surface—far exceeding its planned design life of 32 minutes in such a hostile environment. The lander recorded a temperature of 457°C (855°F) and an atmospheric pressure of 9.0 MPa—89 times the atmospheric pressure here on Earth.

The Surface of Venus

The atmosphere of Venus is composed primarily of carbon dioxide and is much denser and hotter than Earth’s. It supports opaque clouds of Sulphuric acid, making optical Earth-based or orbital observation of the surface impossible. Almost all information about Venus’s topography comes from radar imaging. Aside from carbon dioxide, nitrogen is the other main component of the atmosphere, though many other chemical compounds are present only in trace amounts.

Venus’s atmosphere is in a state of vigorous circulation. The upper layer of the troposphere exhibits a phenomenon known as super-rotation, where the atmosphere circles the planet in just four Earth days—much faster than Venus’s sidereal day of 243 Earth days. The winds driving this super-rotation blow at speeds exceeding 100 m/s (≈360 km/h or 220 mph), moving up to 60 times faster than the planet's rotation. By contrast, the fastest winds on Earth reach only about 10% to 20% of our planet's rotation speed. Closer to the surface, wind speeds slow significantly, with breezes barely reaching 10 km/h (2.8 m/s). Near the poles, anticyclonic structures called polar vortices feature double-eyed patterns with distinctive S-shaped cloud formations.

Above the troposphere lies the mesosphere, separating it from the thermosphere. Thethermosphere also exhibits strong circulation, but of a different nature: gases heated and partially ionized by sunlight migrate from the sunlit side to the dark hemisphere, where they recombine and descend.

Unlike Earth, Venus lacks a magnetic field. Instead, its ionosphere shields the atmosphere from outer space and the solar wind, creating what is known as an induced magnetosphere. Lighter gases, including water vapour, are constantly stripped away by the solar wind through the induced magneto-tail.

It is theorized that Venus's atmosphere, up to around four billion years ago, may have been more like Earth's—possibly with surface water. A runaway greenhouse effect likely resulted after surface water evaporated, triggering an increase in greenhouse gases.

Despite its hostile surface, the atmospheric pressure and temperature between 50 km and 65 km above Venus’s surface are similar to those on Earth. This makes the upper atmosphere of Venus the most Earth-like region in the solar system—more so than the surface of Mars. Because breathable air (a mix of 21% oxygen and 78% nitrogen) acts as a lifting gas on Venus, much like helium on Earth, the upper atmosphere has been proposed as a possible site for future exploration or even colonization.

Venus's atmosphere consists of approximately 96.5% carbon dioxide and 3.5% nitrogen, with trace amounts of other gases, most notably sulphur dioxide. Although nitrogen’s relative percentage is small, the total nitrogen content in Venus’s massive atmosphere is about four times that of Earth’s.

Various compounds are present in minor quantities, including hydrogen chloride (H Cl), hydrogen fluoride (HF), carbon monoxide, water vapour, and atomic oxygen. Hydrogen is scarce in the Venusian atmosphere—most of it likely lost to space—though some remains bound in sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄). The high deuterium-to-hydrogen (D/H) ratio measured in Venus’s atmosphere (0.015–0.025, roughly 100–150 times Earth's ratio) confirms this loss of hydrogen.

In September 2020, scientists announced the detection of phosphine—a potential biomarker for life—in Venus’s atmosphere. No known abiotic processes on Venus could explain the quantities detected. However, further analysis of Pioneer Venus data in 2020 suggested that some of the spectral features originally attributed to chlorine or hydrogen sulphide were actually related to phosphine, meaning earlier estimates of chlorine concentrations were too high, and hydrogen sulphide wasn’t detected at all.

In October 2020, a re-analysis of archived infrared data from 2015 found no trace of phosphine, setting a maximum concentration of 5 parts per billion—one-quarter of the amount first reported. Later that month, a review of the September 2020 study's data processing revealed interpolation errors that produced spurious spectral lines, including the supposed phosphine signature. Corrected data analysis failed to confirm the phosphine detection or found it only at a much lower concentration of 1 part per billion.

So, What Does It All Mean?

It means Venus is a brutal, life-hostile world. And many young people today worry—rightly—that Earth could suffer a similar fate.

But… what if there’s another way forward?
Something so radical, so provocative, it borders on offensive?

In our article, "Someone Is Going To Be Offended, we explored eugenics and Canada’s Indian Act This needs to be tore up and burned a document so unjust and oppressive that it facilitated cultural genocide, plain and simple. The Ministry of Northern Affairs, the federal body responsible for supporting Indigenous peoples (First Nations, Inuit, and Métis) and northern communities, is charged with improving social well-being, fostering economic prosperity, and helping build healthier, sustainable communities.

But is what we see in this ministry—and the legacy of the Indian Act—really the way forward?