Exploring Earth’s Evil Twin

HISTORY This Week

The HISTORY® Channel

History, Education, Society & Culture

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2022

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

October 22, 1975. After traveling millions of miles through space, a Soviet spacecraft plunges through thick clouds of sulfuric acid to land on Venus. Its goal: take a photograph of another planet’s surface and send it back home—history’s first up-close glimpse at a world other than our own. Venus, our closest neighbor, is similar in size to Earth and may even share some planetary material. It’s why scientists sometimes call it our twin planet. Yet its rock-melting temperatures and poisonous atmosphere make it profoundly different. If anything, it is our evil twin. What’s behind humanity's long fascination with Venus? And what can the differences between these cosmic twins teach us about our home planet…its present, and its possible future?

Special thanks to our guests, David Grinspoon, author of Venus Revealed: A New Look Below the Clouds of Our Mysterious Twin Planet, and Sally's twin sister, Eliza Helm. Grinspoon’s latest book is called Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet’s Future.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The History Channel, Original Podcast.
0:04.8	History this week, October 22nd, 1975.
0:13.3	I'm Sally Helm.
0:20.0	The spacecraft has already traveled 186 million miles,
0:25.5	but it's only just reached its destination.
0:29.7	Finally, today, its unmanned lander plunges down into the hot harsh atmosphere of the planet Venus.
0:41.6	The Nira 9 is a probe sent out by the Soviet Union to explore Earth's closest neighbor.
0:48.6	In fact, the goal is to do something that's never been done before.
0:52.2	Take a photograph of another planet's surface and send it home.
0:58.1	This is no simple task.
1:00.0	It's quite possible that the Nira 9 will have traveled those millions of miles in vain,
1:05.3	that it'll burn up in the atmosphere or crash to bits on the surface and go dark,
1:10.4	unable to send anything back to the human beings who have so hopefully launched it into space.
1:16.8	Here's what it has to do.
1:17.7	Travel through the thick swirling clouds of sulfuric acid that make up the vanuusion atmosphere,
1:25.8	deploy one parachute, then a cluster of three more,
1:30.0	jettison its heat shield, travel 20 minutes through Venus' sky,
1:35.5	and finally, crashed out, fast but controlled.
1:39.4	The Nira 9 does all that and then opens its eyes.
1:49.4	What it sees there, we can see too,
1:52.3	thanks to the cameras the probe used to photograph its surroundings.
1:56.3	And its surroundings look kind of like Earth.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The HISTORY® Channel, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The HISTORY® Channel and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.