Body-crushing pressure.
Toxic atmospheres.
Unbearable temperatures.
That's what would be in store for you
if you visited other planets
in our Solar System.
Before you get started on your journey
through the Solar System,
you should pack a bottle of water.
Earth is the only planet known to have
consistent bodies of liquid water
on its surface.
So if you pack enough,
you could probably survive a few days
just about anywhere, right?
Well, sorry to say,
I’ve got some bad news for you.
Let’s start with a visit to Mercury,
the smallest planet in the Solar System.
This rocky, crater-filled planet
is only slightly larger than our Moon.
And it’s located extremely close to the Sun
at a distance of 58 million km (36 million mi).
Even though a day on Mercury equals about 59 days on Earth,
your trip wouldn’t last anywhere near that long.
Due to this slow rotation,
you could land on the sunny half,
where temperatures reach 430 °C (800 °F).
Or maybe you’d aim for the dark side,
where temperatures drop to -180 °C (-290 °F).
Your best bet would be
to find a cozy spot somewhere in between.
But with an atmosphere mainly composed of oxygen,
sodium, hydrogen, helium and potassium,
good luck breathing for very long.
Even in this middle ground,
you wouldn't likely survive more than two minutes.
OK, let’s check out what a day would be like
on the second planet from the Sun, Venus.
You should expect a very warm welcome
because surface temperatures are a piping hot 475 °C (900 °F).
And one day on Venus lasts 243 Earth days.
And if you want to make this day count, you could watch all the incredible documentary series available on Magellan TV.
Find out what happened in this dead world with Exploring Venus, an in-depth look at the possibility of life on our sister planet.
And I have two words for you.
Cloud creatures.
Yeah, thanks to this documentary, I'm sleeping with one eye open up here.
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Geez, it's hot in here.
Unless you’ve got an impossibly robust spacecraft,
you couldn't get very close to the surface.
And even if you did, you wouldn't last very long.
Venus has a thick and toxic atmosphere
with 154,000 times more carbon than the atmosphere of Earth.
And it's shrouded in yellowish clouds of sulfuric acid.
You could say the Venusian atmosphere
is a runaway greenhouse effect.
Between the toxicity and the heat burning you to a crisp,
you wouldn't survive one second on Venus.
Now, let’s skip on over to Mars.
Unless you wanted to stop back on Earth
for a couple of breaths of fresh air.
On Mars, you’d find comfort in a day that is a little over 24 hours.
What you wouldn't find comfortable
is an atmosphere of carbon dioxide,
argon, nitrogen and a little bit of oxygen and water vapor.
The surface of Mars is cold,
with an average temperature of -62 °C (-80 °F).
Combine the low surface temperatures
with the unbreathable air,
and you wouldn't survive much more than a few minutes here either.
On the next planet,
you wouldn’t be able to reach the surface.
That’s because there isn’t one on the gas giant, Jupiter.
This planet is more than twice as massive
as all the other planets in our Solar System combined.
And its atmosphere is primarily hydrogen, helium and cold,
windy clouds of ammonia and water.
Jupiter might be bulky, but it rotates fast.
One day lasts a mere 10 Earth hours.
And because it's so fast,
Jupiter's atmosphere has strong jet streams.
Plus, the Great Red Spot
that is actually a storm bigger than the size of Earth.
If you fell into the planet, you would enter the atmosphere
at a whopping 49 km/s (30 mi/s).
And as you kept falling,
the atmosphere would become denser and more turbulent.
You might feel like you were slamming into a wall again and again.
If you made it 692 km (430 mi) down,
you would find pressure levels higher than
at the bottom of the Mariana Trench,
the deepest place on Earth.
If the pressure didn’t kill you, the temperature,
which averages -145 °C (-229 °F),
certainly would.
You wouldn’t survive on Jupiter for one second.
Now, if you continued on to Saturn,
you’d find another gaseous giant without a surface.
And, like Jupiter,
a day that lasts about 10.7 hours.
Here you would experience deadly strong winds
reaching up to 1,800 km/h (1,118 mph).
With an unbreathable atmosphere made of hydrogen and helium,
Saturn is incapable of supporting life.
Maybe you would have more luck on one of its moons.
Like Titan or Enceladus.
These two moons have internal oceans,
which could theoretically support life.
Moving onto the first of the ice giants in our Solar System.
No surprise here that it also has an unbreathable atmosphere
of hydrogen, helium and methane,
which gives the planet its signature blue-green color
and the stink of rotten eggs.
There are some other unusual hazards on Uranus
you’d need to be prepared for,
such as mysterious flares of X-rays
A dark, cold planet with supersonic winds
as strong as 2,000 km/h (1,200 mph).
That’s faster than the top speed of a fighter jet.
So if the pressure didn't kill you,
those supersonic winds would probably do the trick.
A day on Neptune would last for 16 Earth hours.
But your life there wouldn't last a second.
OK, there it is.
So in case it isn’t clear,
Earth would be the only planet you would wanna visit anytime soon.
Just about anywhere else,
you could look forward to a deadly cocktail
of high pressure and toxic gas.
That's unless we terraformed Mars,
creating a second home for humanity within the Solar System.
But that's a story
for another WHAT IF.