How long would it take you to die on these planets?
One day, we will have to leave the Earth: The sun will become bigger and bigger, and we
will have to escape the solar system. This is what we know for sure, and this is what will happen in
some billions of years unless we got to destroy our planet before nature follows its course.
That's why scientists are looking for exoplanets and habitable places in the universe.
But is there any place like Earth? For example, what would a day look
like on the other planets of our solar system? Come and find out!
MERCURY If you happen to visit Mercury,
you will experience a smaller gravitational field, which means...your mass will still be the same,
but you would feel way lighter than you feel here on Earth! This is because Mercury
is the smallest planet in our Solar System. It is located only 36 million miles (58 million
km) from the Sun and therefore is a rocky planet. Being this close to the star, there's a small
room for volatile components, which are basically found only in the atmosphere,
composed of oxygen (O2), sodium (Na), hydrogen (H2), helium (He), and potassium (K).
Despite its proximity to the Sun, Mercury is not the hottest planet
in our solar system – that title belongs to nearby Venus, due to its denser atmosphere.
Even though a day on Mercury equals about 59 days on Earth,
your trip wouldn’t last anywhere near that long. This is because of the strange changes in
temperatures that you would experience. The sunny half of Mercury reaches 430 °C:
it's really hot! But on the other side, the dark one, temperatures drop to -180 °C.
Your best bet would be to find a cozy spot somewhere in between. But I don't feel like
recommending you to do that, because you couldn't basically breathe on this planet.
The special atmosphere of Mercury won't allow you to live more than 2 minutes. Maybe it's better to
see what are the odds of surviving on Venus. VENUS
First of all, I'm sorry to inform you that, although you won't be bored on Venus,
it would feel like you are, because one day on Venus is....243 Earth days long!
It's true! The rotation rate of Venus is such that the planet orbits around its axis in 243
Earth days. Also, you should expect there to be very hot, because as we said before, Venus
is the hottest planet in the Solar System. Its maximum temperature reaches something like 475 °C.
Basically, if we ever decided to land on Venus, we should first make sure that we have
a really robust spacecraft, or it would melt. But even if we managed to land on the surface,
we would have a hard time breathing. In fact, the amount of carbon in Venus'
atmosphere is ridiculously high: it's about 154.000 times more than the amount
of carbon here, in the Earth's atmosphere! Also, the clouds are made of sulfuric acid,
which gives them a peculiar yellow color. Oh, I forgot to say that sulfuric acid is toxic,
so I don't think it would be a great idea to live there. I mean, you would probably be dead in a
matter of seconds. MARS
As is generally accepted, Mars could be our new home. But could it really be?
Well, maybe yes, if we managed to make some adjustments to its atmosphere.
First of all, we would be happy because on Mars, a day lasts a bit more than 24 hours,
so the timescale is quite similar to the one we are used to, as humans.
But this evil atmosphere would kill us because is mainly composed of carbon dioxide, argon,
nitrogen, and a little bit of oxygen and water vapor. Last but not least,
we should take a look at the temperatures on Mars. This place is really Cold! The average
temperature on the Red Planet is -62 °C. NASA is already considering what kind of
habitation we’ll need to survive on the surface of Mars. Six companies began
designing possible habitat prototypes in 2016, with completed prototypes expected in 24 months.
All these habitats will likely have a few things in common — they have to be self-sustaining,
sealed against the thin atmosphere, and capable of supporting life for extended periods without
support from Earth. To get an idea of what to expect, think about the ISS. We’ll need
things like environmental control and life support systems, power systems,
docking ports, and air locks so that crew can perform spacewalks to repair things that break
or to add new capabilities. Expect big robust equipment to travel across the stars to Mars
during the first manned mission. Whatever the astronauts use must be up for the long journey.
JUPITER Well, although
it is a difficult thing to accomplish, we could in theory land on Mercury, Venus,
and Mars having robust spaceships. But what if I told you there's no chance to land on Jupiter?
It's true! Jupiter is a gas giant, and it doesn't have solid ground to land on.
It's a huge ball of gas, someone says Jupiter is a “missed star”.
The amount of gas is so huge that this planet is more than twice as massive
as all the other planets in our Solar System combined! And there's no rocky contribution!
The main components of the atmosphere are hydrogen, helium, and cold,
windy clouds of ammonia and water. What we can do is orbit Jupiter, fly by it, as for example
Juno mission did along a polar orbit. Jupiter rotates really fast. One day
lasts something like 10 Earth hours. Thank god we can't land on it because
a human would be sleeping basically all day. Also, I don't know if you noticed the huge red
spot on Jupiter, but that's actually a storm. And the bad news is that...the storm is bigger
than Earth, believe me, or not. It is called the Great Red Spot.
If you fell into Jupiter, You'll quickly hit the denser atmosphere below, which will hit
you like a wall. It won't be enough to stop you, though. After about 3 minutes you'll
reach the cloud tops 155 miles down. Here, you'll experience the full brunt of Jupiter's
rotation. Jupiter is the fastest rotating planet in our solar system. One day lasts about 9.5 Earth
hours. This creates powerful winds that can whip around the planet at more than 300 mph.
About 75 miles below the clouds, you reach the limit of human exploration.
The Galileo probe made it this far when it dove into Jupiter's atmosphere in 1995. It only
lasted 58 minutes before losing contact and was eventually destroyed by the crushing pressures.
If you made it 429 miles (692 km) down, you would find pressure levels higher
than at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest place on Earth. You wouldn’t survive
on Jupiter for one second, also being the temperature lower than -140 Celsius degrees.
SATURN Saturn, just like Jupiter,
is another giant, without a surface. Winds on Saturn reach up to 1,118
miles/h,(1800 km/h), and I doubt you would make it through alive.
But even if you did you would need to breathe at a certain point.
And that's the real trouble. The atmosphere would be unbreathable
because it is made of hydrogen and helium. If you are a warm-weather person or looking for
a balmy place to retire, you could build your home in Saturn’s interior.
Even though Saturn is a frozen world, sitting 887 million miles from the Sun, its core is
scorching hot. But maybe you would have more luck on one of its moons. For example, take
Enceladus. This Saturn’s small, icy moon captured the imaginations of people worldwide when NASA’s
Cassini spacecraft saw it spewing plumes of water into space. This water comes from a global, liquid
ocean concealed beneath Enceladus’ fissured crust. As Cassini flew through Enceladus’ plumes between
2008 to 2015, its mass spectrometer found a variety of organic molecules — building
blocks of life — coming from the moon’s ocean. Cassini also detected molecular
hydrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, and rock fragments hiding within the moon’s plumes.
Who said that the most comfortable place for us is a planet? Maybe we could live on a moon.
URANUS Let's move to Uranus. Uranus
has a day that lasts about 17 hours. Of course, again no landing
here. Only flyby maybe, and if you dove into its atmosphere, you would not be able to breathe.
To your surprise, you would notice blue skies, just like home sweet home. Yet,
blue skies on Uranus differ dramatically from Earth. Deadly abundances of methane
gas are now the cause of your world’s blue skies.
Helium, methane, and hydrogen are an evil combination of elements for an atmosphere. Also,
fun fact: if you could smell it would smell like rotten eggs.
Oh, and if you often wished the summer would last more here on Earth, then,
living on Uranus might be the ideal situation for you, because it lasts something like 41 years.
But if you ever watched the sky with a telescope, you might notice a pale blue dot: Earth. You might
therefore get homesick! And I'm sorry to inform you the drive back to Earth to visit friends at
highway speeds will take around 43 million hours. You would die in less than a second.
NEPTUNE Last but not least,
Neptune. How would we survive on it? First things first. There is no “on” Neptune,
there’s only in Neptune. Neptune is a gas planet with no surface. To survive inside Neptune,
you couldn’t go too deep because the heat and pressure would get you. You’d need everything
you need to survive anywhere hostile - air, water, food, energy, waste disposal, a system to keep the
high pressure out (or in if you were very high in its atmosphere). In addition on Neptune,
you’d need some kind of flotation system, so as not to sink deeper into its atmosphere.
For you to die here, it would take less than a second.
Neptune has got a bunch of ways to kill you: Gravity, radiation, unbreathable atmosphere,
atmospheric pressure, and cold. It is a true serial killer!
Well, that's pretty much all I had to tell you.
So now, why don't you calm down and just appreciate what we have here, on Earth?
Earth seems to be the perfect place to live. We have a nice atmosphere, that allows us
to gently breath, and the Sun, which gives us energy and makes us tanned during the summer. It
is also the only planet where we have coke. Hopefully, we won't destroy our planet. And
if we manage to, we wouldn't have so many chances to find another place any time soon.
Scientists are of course working on that, but even if we found some extrasolar planet that
seems good for hosting life, the problem would be how to reach it in a reasonable amount of
time. Probably it's all matter of technology, and we just have to wait until someone comes
up with a clever idea. Until then, the only thing we can do is treat our planet well.
Thanks for watching! Let me know in the comments
below and be sure to watch our other video about dinosaurs through the youtube endscreens!