1 00:00:00,240 --> 00:00:00,240 2 00:00:00,320 --> 00:00:04,840 -Welcome to exploration in the 2020s. 3 00:00:04,840 --> 00:00:07,440 We're going to send women to the moon, 4 00:00:07,440 --> 00:00:10,080 and we're going to return samples from Mars. 5 00:00:10,080 --> 00:00:12,600 And we're about to launch humanity's 6 00:00:12,600 --> 00:00:14,800 greatest space telescope -- the James Webb. 7 00:00:14,800 --> 00:00:18,640 And in this time of looking back to look forward, 8 00:00:18,640 --> 00:00:20,880 I want to look out to the planet Venus. 9 00:00:20,880 --> 00:00:24,240 And I want to take you there through the eyes of an explorer 10 00:00:24,240 --> 00:00:26,760 and through what I think will matter to people. 11 00:00:26,760 --> 00:00:29,240 Some of us think of Venus as the missing link. 12 00:00:29,240 --> 00:00:32,320 But before I go there, I want to remind you 13 00:00:32,320 --> 00:00:34,640 why we explore beyond Earth. 14 00:00:34,640 --> 00:00:37,080 In these very difficult times here on our planet Earth, 15 00:00:37,080 --> 00:00:40,800 on our spaceship, why, as we look at our beautiful -- 16 00:00:40,800 --> 00:00:42,680 our beautiful spaceship, planet Earth, 17 00:00:42,680 --> 00:00:45,080 do we need to think of the bigger context in space? 18 00:00:45,080 --> 00:00:47,760 And I like to share this as I begin 19 00:00:47,760 --> 00:00:51,200 because it kind of connects us all to the bigger cosmos... 20 00:00:51,200 --> 00:00:54,640 because as we look at space and our place in space, 21 00:00:54,640 --> 00:00:57,720 we're reminded that it colors our lives, 22 00:00:57,720 --> 00:01:01,360 the history of life on Earth, every second of every day. 23 00:01:01,360 --> 00:01:05,280 And how we're here, why we're here is part of that journey. 24 00:01:05,280 --> 00:01:09,240 And so, it's been said by some -- I'm just quoting them -- 25 00:01:09,240 --> 00:01:12,080 that single-planet species don't survive. 26 00:01:12,080 --> 00:01:14,040 So as we extend ourselves into space 27 00:01:14,040 --> 00:01:16,880 and learn from our neighboring planets like Venus, 28 00:01:16,880 --> 00:01:18,560 we're exploring, like many of you 29 00:01:18,560 --> 00:01:20,960 who explore the great places on Earth. 30 00:01:20,960 --> 00:01:24,400 So, let's go to Venus. You can see her in the night sky 31 00:01:24,400 --> 00:01:27,280 if you're looking out at night on a clear night right now. 32 00:01:27,280 --> 00:01:29,840 She's the second-brightest object. 33 00:01:29,840 --> 00:01:31,280 Historically significant, 34 00:01:31,280 --> 00:01:35,240 and she is a planet with a story yet untold. 35 00:01:35,240 --> 00:01:38,200 And so I hope tonight I can fill in some of the gaps 36 00:01:38,200 --> 00:01:41,920 and tell you why some of us are just so passionate about Venus. 37 00:01:41,920 --> 00:01:43,920 A planet with an atmosphere so big, 38 00:01:43,920 --> 00:01:47,360 we think it's the record book of that planet. 39 00:01:47,360 --> 00:01:50,040 It's the fingerprints of the history of another world 40 00:01:50,040 --> 00:01:51,440 just like our own. 41 00:01:51,440 --> 00:01:53,320 So, let's go back 500 years for a minute. 42 00:01:53,320 --> 00:01:55,640 Remember that, 500 years ago, 43 00:01:55,640 --> 00:01:58,680 while da Vinci was finishing his great opuses 44 00:01:58,680 --> 00:02:01,800 in art and science and technology, 45 00:02:01,800 --> 00:02:04,440 while Magellan was starting his grand voyage around the Earth, 46 00:02:04,440 --> 00:02:08,400 the first orbit, we, in that heyday of the Renaissance, 47 00:02:08,400 --> 00:02:11,000 were just thinking about our world in new ways. 48 00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:13,120 And 470 years later, 49 00:02:13,120 --> 00:02:15,560 NASA's mission known as Magellan 50 00:02:15,560 --> 00:02:20,280 mapped the planet Venus using exquisite technologies, 51 00:02:20,280 --> 00:02:23,720 putting a face on Venus that was otherwise covered by clouds. 52 00:02:23,720 --> 00:02:25,800 And, today, we're getting ready in the next year 53 00:02:25,800 --> 00:02:28,520 or so to launch telescopes that will take 54 00:02:28,520 --> 00:02:33,200 the taste of atmospheres of planets around other stars. 55 00:02:33,200 --> 00:02:35,200 And for that, some of us think, 56 00:02:35,200 --> 00:02:38,080 I think in the spirit of da Vinci and Magellan, 57 00:02:38,080 --> 00:02:40,520 that we need to think about our own Venus, too, 58 00:02:40,520 --> 00:02:42,680 because she may help us understand 59 00:02:42,680 --> 00:02:45,200 what we see out there in deep space. 60 00:02:45,200 --> 00:02:47,640 So come with me as we think about Venus, 61 00:02:47,640 --> 00:02:49,760 because we live here on Earth 62 00:02:49,760 --> 00:02:52,560 on a profoundly magical ocean planet. 63 00:02:52,560 --> 00:02:54,360 We're going back to the moon with women, 64 00:02:54,360 --> 00:02:56,560 with robots, with commercial. 65 00:02:56,560 --> 00:02:58,560 We're going to bring samples back from Mars 66 00:02:58,560 --> 00:03:01,200 to ask the questions "Are we alone?" 67 00:03:01,200 --> 00:03:03,400 So why should we worry about Venus? 68 00:03:03,400 --> 00:03:06,480 I think because Venus is that special place 69 00:03:06,480 --> 00:03:08,200 that we haven't thought about enough. 70 00:03:08,200 --> 00:03:10,400 Sometimes there's a missing link. 71 00:03:10,400 --> 00:03:12,600 And I would like to submit to you tonight 72 00:03:12,600 --> 00:03:14,560 that as we prepare for these great voyages 73 00:03:14,560 --> 00:03:16,720 of people to new places 74 00:03:16,720 --> 00:03:20,000 and to new places on Earth, that we should think about Venus. 75 00:03:20,000 --> 00:03:24,000 So, here we are on our biocentric world, Earth. 76 00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:27,120 It's a pale blue dot to astronomers, perhaps. 77 00:03:27,120 --> 00:03:28,880 It's an ocean world. 78 00:03:28,880 --> 00:03:31,400 And next to us is Venus on one side, 79 00:03:31,400 --> 00:03:35,000 inbound from Earth toward the sun, and Mars looking out. 80 00:03:35,000 --> 00:03:37,200 And Mars is definitely a future home, 81 00:03:37,200 --> 00:03:39,680 a place where we will go with women and men. 82 00:03:39,680 --> 00:03:43,160 Spacecraft are there now, the Curiosity rover. 83 00:03:43,160 --> 00:03:44,880 But what about Venus? 84 00:03:44,880 --> 00:03:50,000 And I think we're beginning to hope beyond just magical musings 85 00:03:50,000 --> 00:03:52,440 that Venus was a world that may have had life. 86 00:03:52,440 --> 00:03:56,320 I'm sorry. May have had oceans, prospects for being habitable, 87 00:03:56,320 --> 00:03:59,400 some scientists think even life, and a story 88 00:03:59,400 --> 00:04:02,240 that needs to be connected to our own and Mars... 89 00:04:02,240 --> 00:04:04,200 because here, on Earth, we know our planet 90 00:04:04,200 --> 00:04:07,080 has been a life-bearing world for billions of years. 91 00:04:07,080 --> 00:04:10,160 But on Venus, that record, if it ever existed, 92 00:04:10,160 --> 00:04:13,720 may tell us about a similar pathway, a destiny. 93 00:04:13,720 --> 00:04:16,400 And so, for some of us, what's happening to Venus today, 94 00:04:16,400 --> 00:04:19,160 versus what happened a billion years ago 95 00:04:19,160 --> 00:04:23,600 before the dinosaurs in that microbial stage of Earth life -- 96 00:04:23,600 --> 00:04:25,840 What happened to Venus 3 billion years ago 97 00:04:25,840 --> 00:04:27,200 may be important ingredients 98 00:04:27,200 --> 00:04:30,000 into how life works in our universe. 99 00:04:30,000 --> 00:04:31,760 So let's take a voyage. 100 00:04:31,760 --> 00:04:33,920 Now, to me, as a scientist, 101 00:04:33,920 --> 00:04:37,680 and many of my colleagues, we have a Venus problem. 102 00:04:37,680 --> 00:04:39,800 And I mean that in the sense 103 00:04:39,800 --> 00:04:42,080 that what we think we know about Venus 104 00:04:42,080 --> 00:04:47,360 is a patchwork, a quilt work of glimmers of wonderful things, 105 00:04:47,360 --> 00:04:50,360 stories that would support oceans, 106 00:04:50,360 --> 00:04:54,560 active crust, volcanoes, habitable atmospheres, 107 00:04:54,560 --> 00:04:58,040 but none of them are complete. It's sort of half-baked. 108 00:04:58,040 --> 00:05:01,080 So, let's take that voyage now and see what we can learn. 109 00:05:01,080 --> 00:05:03,080 So, first, I got to remind you -- 110 00:05:03,080 --> 00:05:04,840 I mean, we're talking about the Renaissance here, 111 00:05:04,840 --> 00:05:08,120 500 years ago -- Why are we so fascinated? 112 00:05:08,120 --> 00:05:10,160 Partly because you can't miss Venus. 113 00:05:10,160 --> 00:05:11,920 If you see the moon and you look up 114 00:05:11,920 --> 00:05:13,400 and you see the next brightest thing, 115 00:05:13,400 --> 00:05:15,960 very often, when she's visible, it's Venus. 116 00:05:15,960 --> 00:05:17,920 She wanders across the sky, 117 00:05:17,920 --> 00:05:20,640 often the brightest thing you see when there's a new moon. 118 00:05:20,640 --> 00:05:22,960 There is no moon, so we see Venus. 119 00:05:22,960 --> 00:05:25,760 And she wanders around the sky from the morning start 120 00:05:25,760 --> 00:05:28,440 to the night start in a resonance with Earth. 121 00:05:28,440 --> 00:05:30,320 And, of course, the great artists of the Renaissance 122 00:05:30,320 --> 00:05:32,760 painted the Venus from the art take. 123 00:05:32,760 --> 00:05:35,480 So Venus is kind of part of our DNA. 124 00:05:35,480 --> 00:05:37,840 And we see the history of Venus 125 00:05:37,840 --> 00:05:41,160 the way we will look for planets around nearby stars. 126 00:05:41,160 --> 00:05:43,200 Several years ago, Venus transited our sun, 127 00:05:43,200 --> 00:05:47,800 and we saw -- You see that black circle there with the red arrow. 128 00:05:47,800 --> 00:05:50,360 That's Venus going across our sun. 129 00:05:50,360 --> 00:05:55,160 If we were a telescope in orbit around Proxima Centauri Beta 130 00:05:55,160 --> 00:05:58,600 and you looked, then you could track that transit 131 00:05:58,600 --> 00:06:01,240 and measure the chemistry of the Venus atmosphere, 132 00:06:01,240 --> 00:06:04,400 which is what we do now as we look for exoplanets. 133 00:06:04,400 --> 00:06:07,080 So Venus is there to see in all of her glory. 134 00:06:07,080 --> 00:06:10,280 And she's a big planet. She's Earth-sized. 135 00:06:10,280 --> 00:06:12,000 She's an Earth-sized planet. 136 00:06:12,000 --> 00:06:15,200 Earth-sized in mass, almost in density. 137 00:06:15,200 --> 00:06:17,880 She has a very peculiar pattern around the sun. 138 00:06:17,880 --> 00:06:19,320 Her day is longer than a year. 139 00:06:19,320 --> 00:06:21,920 She rotates backwards relative 140 00:06:21,920 --> 00:06:23,640 to Earth and Mars and the planets. 141 00:06:23,640 --> 00:06:26,480 No seasons, she sits straight up like a top, 142 00:06:26,480 --> 00:06:28,280 and no magnetic field. 143 00:06:28,280 --> 00:06:30,600 She's really the atmosphere planet. 144 00:06:30,600 --> 00:06:32,000 And when you look at her atmosphere, 145 00:06:32,000 --> 00:06:36,160 today, it's a hothouse run amuck. 146 00:06:36,160 --> 00:06:39,360 A pressure cooker at the surface with temperatures 147 00:06:39,360 --> 00:06:41,080 that are like your pizza oven. 148 00:06:41,080 --> 00:06:43,200 The atmosphere is toxic -- 149 00:06:43,200 --> 00:06:45,840 carbon dioxide, a little bit of nitrogen and argon, 150 00:06:45,840 --> 00:06:48,000 a little, tiny bit of water vapor. 151 00:06:48,000 --> 00:06:50,160 If you were on the surface of Venus today, 152 00:06:50,160 --> 00:06:51,920 it would be like being in a submarine 153 00:06:51,920 --> 00:06:53,520 half a mile deep in the ocean. 154 00:06:53,520 --> 00:06:56,760 The winds in the atmosphere, where the clouds are, 50, 155 00:06:56,760 --> 00:07:00,200 60 kilometers up, swirl around like a giant jet stream, 156 00:07:00,200 --> 00:07:01,720 always moving west, 157 00:07:01,720 --> 00:07:03,200 moving faster than its rotation rate. 158 00:07:03,200 --> 00:07:04,600 And at the surface, though, 159 00:07:04,600 --> 00:07:07,320 it's like the tranquil deeps of the ocean. 160 00:07:07,320 --> 00:07:09,000 So, we don't know anything about 161 00:07:09,000 --> 00:07:11,880 that lower 100,000 feet of that Venus atmosphere. 162 00:07:11,880 --> 00:07:13,760 Everything we have are glimmers 163 00:07:13,760 --> 00:07:16,040 from missions from the '70s and '80s. 164 00:07:16,040 --> 00:07:18,760 We know the cloud deck is corrosive, 165 00:07:18,760 --> 00:07:21,520 and we know that at the surface, you wouldn't see the sun, 166 00:07:21,520 --> 00:07:23,880 but it would be like a really cloudy day. 167 00:07:23,880 --> 00:07:27,000 So, this is the Venus we know today. 168 00:07:27,000 --> 00:07:29,880 Very exciting, very mysterious. 169 00:07:29,880 --> 00:07:33,000 In fact, more like your oven than you might imagine. 170 00:07:33,000 --> 00:07:36,640 So, today, 60 degrees here in the eastern United States. 171 00:07:36,640 --> 00:07:38,680 The surface temperature on Venus is, you know, 172 00:07:38,680 --> 00:07:42,440 870 Fahrenheit, 450 centigrade. 173 00:07:42,440 --> 00:07:45,200 Really not a place we can imagine going. 174 00:07:45,200 --> 00:07:48,080 And yet we're hungry to understand that Venus, 175 00:07:48,080 --> 00:07:50,840 because we've been confused by her throughout history. 176 00:07:50,840 --> 00:07:52,600 TV shows 50 years ago 177 00:07:52,600 --> 00:07:55,360 painted Venus as a swamp with crazy aliens. 178 00:07:55,360 --> 00:07:58,080 Now, when you look at Venus from the standpoint 179 00:07:58,080 --> 00:08:00,400 of what it might seem if you were standing there, 180 00:08:00,400 --> 00:08:03,280 this is the rogues' gallery of planetary panoramas. 181 00:08:03,280 --> 00:08:04,720 On the left, you see Venus 182 00:08:04,720 --> 00:08:08,120 as studied by the Soviet landers of the '80s. 183 00:08:08,120 --> 00:08:10,200 And then we see our ocean planet, 184 00:08:10,200 --> 00:08:13,000 our beautiful moon, where women and men will be going back. 185 00:08:13,000 --> 00:08:15,640 The Mars planet, where we seek signs of "are we alone?" 186 00:08:15,640 --> 00:08:18,600 And Titan, where a mission known as Dragonfly will go. 187 00:08:18,600 --> 00:08:19,840 Look at Venus. 188 00:08:19,840 --> 00:08:22,160 It's a very different world. 189 00:08:22,160 --> 00:08:25,560 And we've really only seen it up close 190 00:08:25,560 --> 00:08:28,200 four times in the history of women and men. 191 00:08:28,200 --> 00:08:30,560 So, the other thing about Venus that's really peculiar 192 00:08:30,560 --> 00:08:33,000 and kind of a neat, fun fact if you're playing "Jeopardy!" 193 00:08:33,000 --> 00:08:36,320 or any other games is, that lowermost atmosphere 194 00:08:36,320 --> 00:08:39,840 the lower 50,000 feet of the Venus atmosphere, 195 00:08:39,840 --> 00:08:41,920 is not a gas like you and I know. 196 00:08:41,920 --> 00:08:43,320 It's not steam. 197 00:08:43,320 --> 00:08:45,560 It's not the kind of carbon dioxide you'd find 198 00:08:45,560 --> 00:08:46,920 when dry ice sublimates. 199 00:08:46,920 --> 00:08:49,640 It is a supercritical gas 200 00:08:49,640 --> 00:08:51,520 that's under such pressure and temperature, 201 00:08:51,520 --> 00:08:53,080 it acts more like a fluid. 202 00:08:53,080 --> 00:08:55,960 It's only 14 times less dense than water. 203 00:08:55,960 --> 00:08:59,160 It could actually conceivably carve channels 204 00:08:59,160 --> 00:09:01,480 the way density currents do in the ocean. 205 00:09:01,480 --> 00:09:03,880 This is the Venus we have to get to know. 206 00:09:03,880 --> 00:09:06,400 It's an engineering challenge. 207 00:09:06,400 --> 00:09:10,200 And it's, I think, within reach as the people of this planet. 208 00:09:10,200 --> 00:09:11,440 So, the big question -- 209 00:09:11,440 --> 00:09:13,120 Venus and Earth are the same size 210 00:09:13,120 --> 00:09:16,600 in the same neighborhood of this special solar system we live in. 211 00:09:16,600 --> 00:09:18,720 Why are they so different? 212 00:09:18,720 --> 00:09:22,320 And everything points to Venus, a climate state run amuck, 213 00:09:22,320 --> 00:09:24,840 a planet that you wouldn't want to walk on or live on, 214 00:09:24,840 --> 00:09:26,560 and our beautiful, habitable Earth. 215 00:09:26,560 --> 00:09:28,920 Why did they work differently? 216 00:09:28,920 --> 00:09:33,520 Why did Mother Nature give us this control experiment nearby? 217 00:09:33,520 --> 00:09:35,560 That's the big question. How can we tell? 218 00:09:35,560 --> 00:09:37,600 We've mapped Venus with radar. 219 00:09:37,600 --> 00:09:41,400 We've been there with probes. The last U.S. probe -- in 1978. 220 00:09:41,400 --> 00:09:44,480 So it's interesting when you think about that, 221 00:09:44,480 --> 00:09:46,600 because very often when we look at Venus, 222 00:09:46,600 --> 00:09:48,120 do a Google search on Venus, 223 00:09:48,120 --> 00:09:50,440 you'll come up with beautiful artists' pictures 224 00:09:50,440 --> 00:09:52,000 of what it might look like. 225 00:09:52,000 --> 00:09:55,760 These kind of landscapes that look vaguely like places 226 00:09:55,760 --> 00:09:58,440 we would know in Iceland and the Azores, 227 00:09:58,440 --> 00:10:02,320 the seafloor, with mountains looming in the misty distances. 228 00:10:02,320 --> 00:10:05,280 Venus is still an artscape, an art project. 229 00:10:05,280 --> 00:10:07,400 Hence some connection to Leonardo da Vinci 230 00:10:07,400 --> 00:10:08,600 for people like me. 231 00:10:08,600 --> 00:10:09,920 We want to change that. 232 00:10:09,920 --> 00:10:11,640 We want to make it an exploration scape 233 00:10:11,640 --> 00:10:13,400 where we can imagine going. 234 00:10:13,400 --> 00:10:17,400 And over the last 60 years, 40 missions have gone to Venus, 235 00:10:17,400 --> 00:10:19,080 the first by the Soviet Union. 236 00:10:19,080 --> 00:10:22,000 Visited the surface for the first time in the '70s. 237 00:10:22,000 --> 00:10:25,880 Our one mission to the atmosphere of Venus was in 1978. 238 00:10:25,880 --> 00:10:29,000 It was a Multiprobe/Orbiter mission known as Pioneer Venus, 239 00:10:29,000 --> 00:10:31,560 and its big probe transited the atmosphere, 240 00:10:31,560 --> 00:10:32,920 but was unfortunately 241 00:10:32,920 --> 00:10:35,240 not completely successful in its transit 242 00:10:35,240 --> 00:10:37,440 in making the measurements that we need. 243 00:10:37,440 --> 00:10:41,680 The Soviet landers, the Veneras and Vegas, landed on Venus 244 00:10:41,680 --> 00:10:44,800 in the '70s and '80s, and they provided our data 245 00:10:44,800 --> 00:10:46,720 that we use to look up close at Venus. 246 00:10:46,720 --> 00:10:49,760 I was lucky enough to work with colleagues in Russia 247 00:10:49,760 --> 00:10:53,000 then, Soviet Union, in part of my PhD thesis. 248 00:10:53,000 --> 00:10:56,640 Our own mission named after the Portuguese explorer Magellan 249 00:10:56,640 --> 00:10:58,840 mapped Venus from orbit in the '90s, 250 00:10:58,840 --> 00:11:01,120 and we have not been back since. 251 00:11:01,120 --> 00:11:03,120 This is the planet whose exploration history 252 00:11:03,120 --> 00:11:04,360 is incomplete. 253 00:11:04,360 --> 00:11:06,720 This view is an artist's rendering 254 00:11:06,720 --> 00:11:08,960 we commissioned in 1986 255 00:11:08,960 --> 00:11:12,000 after the last landing spacecraft on Venus 256 00:11:12,000 --> 00:11:14,440 from the Soviet Union, known as Vega 2. 257 00:11:14,440 --> 00:11:17,000 And this is it. It landed on the night side 258 00:11:17,000 --> 00:11:19,480 in the dusky dark of that world, 259 00:11:19,480 --> 00:11:21,840 where we think the surface may even glow. 260 00:11:21,840 --> 00:11:23,280 So, no one's been back since. 261 00:11:23,280 --> 00:11:26,600 35 years -- no missions to the surface of Venus, 262 00:11:26,600 --> 00:11:28,200 no missions to the atmosphere. 263 00:11:28,200 --> 00:11:31,000 And yet we have the tools 264 00:11:31,000 --> 00:11:34,200 to see that world in a way that will pop like Mars, 265 00:11:34,200 --> 00:11:36,800 like Titan, like other worlds, like the moon. 266 00:11:36,800 --> 00:11:38,640 Now, I had to show this picture to show 267 00:11:38,640 --> 00:11:41,080 that I've sort of been thinking about Venus 268 00:11:41,080 --> 00:11:42,440 perhaps way too long. 269 00:11:42,440 --> 00:11:45,600 This is a spacecraft known as Venera 13, 270 00:11:45,600 --> 00:11:47,720 a model from a museum in Moscow. 271 00:11:47,720 --> 00:11:50,160 And next to it is a graduate student with, um, 272 00:11:50,160 --> 00:11:51,800 I will admit, pretty poor shoes, 273 00:11:51,800 --> 00:11:55,640 perhaps not the best clothing. 274 00:11:55,640 --> 00:11:59,040 But why did students like me across the ages, 275 00:11:59,040 --> 00:12:01,240 actually, the last decades, care? 276 00:12:01,240 --> 00:12:03,120 Was it the wonder of exploration? 277 00:12:03,120 --> 00:12:06,200 The discovery possibility? Our curiosity? 278 00:12:06,200 --> 00:12:07,720 The need for better clothes? 279 00:12:07,720 --> 00:12:10,480 I don't know. But these missions in the '70s and '80s 280 00:12:10,480 --> 00:12:13,680 gave us the hope that we could get to Venus. 281 00:12:13,680 --> 00:12:16,680 These four pictures are the sum total 282 00:12:16,680 --> 00:12:20,000 of the backyard-sized views of the surface of Venus 283 00:12:20,000 --> 00:12:23,920 collected by the Soviet Union in the '70s and '80s. 284 00:12:23,920 --> 00:12:27,320 They show landscapes, we believe, that could be volcanic, 285 00:12:27,320 --> 00:12:30,680 the way those are on the ocean floor of Earth. 286 00:12:30,680 --> 00:12:32,720 They are very different than things we've seen 287 00:12:32,720 --> 00:12:33,840 on other worlds. 288 00:12:33,840 --> 00:12:35,760 They don't look like the moon. 289 00:12:35,760 --> 00:12:37,560 You can even see the bust of Lenin in the pictures 290 00:12:37,560 --> 00:12:40,960 in lower scale in that little pentagon 291 00:12:40,960 --> 00:12:43,040 in honor of the Soviet voyages. 292 00:12:43,040 --> 00:12:45,840 None of these missions lasted for more than a couple hours. 293 00:12:45,840 --> 00:12:47,280 But this is our data. 294 00:12:47,280 --> 00:12:50,960 This is what showed us the Venus at human scale. 295 00:12:50,960 --> 00:12:52,600 Some of us think it's time to go back. 296 00:12:52,600 --> 00:12:54,920 Meanwhile, in the United States, 297 00:12:54,920 --> 00:12:57,440 anchored by great questions coming out of the '70s and '80s, 298 00:12:57,440 --> 00:13:01,560 we mapped Venus exquisitely with the Magellan Radar Mapper, 299 00:13:01,560 --> 00:13:03,440 built at NASA's JPL. 300 00:13:03,440 --> 00:13:06,320 Its mission -- in the course of 3 1/2 years, 301 00:13:06,320 --> 00:13:10,040 map Venus at 100-meter scale, the scale of a football field, 302 00:13:10,040 --> 00:13:11,360 a soccer pitch. 303 00:13:11,360 --> 00:13:12,960 Named for Magellan, the great explorer 304 00:13:12,960 --> 00:13:14,960 who did the first orbit of Earth. 305 00:13:14,960 --> 00:13:17,960 Magellan showed us Venus, the hills and dales, 306 00:13:17,960 --> 00:13:20,720 the rolling plains that make up most of the surface, 307 00:13:20,720 --> 00:13:23,640 the mountains, places that are amongst the most exotic 308 00:13:23,640 --> 00:13:25,040 in our solar system. 309 00:13:25,040 --> 00:13:27,200 It showed us Venus is an interesting world 310 00:13:27,200 --> 00:13:31,000 that doesn't follow our terrestrial playbook. 311 00:13:31,000 --> 00:13:34,440 And so, this radar view shows areas that are low in blue 312 00:13:34,440 --> 00:13:36,360 and high in reds and whites. 313 00:13:36,360 --> 00:13:39,880 It's colored by how radio waves see through the clouds 314 00:13:39,880 --> 00:13:41,560 to see the surface. 315 00:13:41,560 --> 00:13:43,680 One of the most exciting places on Venus 316 00:13:43,680 --> 00:13:46,160 is the high mountains of Maxwell 317 00:13:46,160 --> 00:13:48,440 in the region known as Ishtar Terra. 318 00:13:48,440 --> 00:13:52,360 Some of us think of Ishtar as the Tibetan Plateau of Venus. 319 00:13:52,360 --> 00:13:56,080 This is a region on Venus about the size of Australia. 320 00:13:56,080 --> 00:13:58,160 It sits at 60 degrees north. 321 00:13:58,160 --> 00:13:59,800 And it's notable for its high mountains, 322 00:13:59,800 --> 00:14:01,800 known as Maxwell Montes, 323 00:14:01,800 --> 00:14:05,480 which rise 11 kilometers above the plains. 324 00:14:05,480 --> 00:14:07,480 That's taller than Mount Everest, 325 00:14:07,480 --> 00:14:10,360 than Mauna Kea is from the seafloor. 326 00:14:10,360 --> 00:14:13,680 And these mountains may be coated with unique minerals. 327 00:14:13,680 --> 00:14:17,320 They may be formed very dynamically, but we don't know. 328 00:14:17,320 --> 00:14:20,000 Our views are from Magellan and other orbiters, 329 00:14:20,000 --> 00:14:22,200 not from being there. 330 00:14:22,200 --> 00:14:24,800 This is the kind of enigma of Venus. 331 00:14:24,800 --> 00:14:27,040 For Mars, we know the big mountains. 332 00:14:27,040 --> 00:14:29,040 We're learning about them on Pluto even, 333 00:14:29,040 --> 00:14:30,840 but not so much for Venus. 334 00:14:30,840 --> 00:14:33,720 The volcanoes of Venus are just unbelievable. 335 00:14:33,720 --> 00:14:36,200 Maat Mons, one of the big granddaddies of them all, 336 00:14:36,200 --> 00:14:40,000 rises over 5 kilometers, 15,000 feet. 337 00:14:40,000 --> 00:14:42,760 It looks a little bit like the Kilimanjaro of Venus. 338 00:14:42,760 --> 00:14:46,520 This radar map, in perspective of Maat Mons, attests 339 00:14:46,520 --> 00:14:49,200 to the fact that it may be a kind of hotspot volcano, 340 00:14:49,200 --> 00:14:52,520 perhaps operating like Hawaii on the Earth. 341 00:14:52,520 --> 00:14:55,600 But, again, we don't know. Are these volcanoes active? 342 00:14:55,600 --> 00:14:57,040 What could they tell us 343 00:14:57,040 --> 00:14:58,440 through the lens of the atmosphere? 344 00:14:58,440 --> 00:15:01,400 Do they leave their gas signature? 345 00:15:01,400 --> 00:15:04,560 When we study Venus, it's kind of like CSI does Venus 346 00:15:04,560 --> 00:15:06,880 with our forensic tools. 347 00:15:06,880 --> 00:15:10,600 So, what we've learned about Venus over the last 50 years 348 00:15:10,600 --> 00:15:13,000 is, it doesn't follow our playbook. 349 00:15:13,000 --> 00:15:17,000 It does not have an intricate network of plates 350 00:15:17,000 --> 00:15:18,600 that jumble and jostle, 351 00:15:18,600 --> 00:15:22,200 producing the kind of mountain ranges of the Andes, 352 00:15:22,200 --> 00:15:25,480 the volcanic island chains of the Hawaiian, the Tonga, 353 00:15:25,480 --> 00:15:27,680 that produce all the beautiful things we know of. 354 00:15:27,680 --> 00:15:30,960 Of course, the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas. 355 00:15:30,960 --> 00:15:32,400 Doesn't work that way. 356 00:15:32,400 --> 00:15:35,160 It may have at one point, but it doesn't today. 357 00:15:35,160 --> 00:15:39,120 It's a planet that may operate more like a one-plate planet, 358 00:15:39,120 --> 00:15:42,200 where its crustal motions are different. 359 00:15:42,200 --> 00:15:43,600 Maybe they once were like Earth's, 360 00:15:43,600 --> 00:15:45,840 but the record today is different. 361 00:15:45,840 --> 00:15:47,960 It's also a world with landscapes 362 00:15:47,960 --> 00:15:50,680 that are pretty exotic, almost enigmatic. 363 00:15:50,680 --> 00:15:52,160 We see most of the surface 364 00:15:52,160 --> 00:15:54,720 seems to look like the kind of volcanic plains 365 00:15:54,720 --> 00:15:58,080 we know on Earth, we know on the moon, we know on Mars. 366 00:15:58,080 --> 00:16:01,400 There's very few impact craters. The surface is young. 367 00:16:01,400 --> 00:16:04,000 Some of its surface reminds us of the kind of floors 368 00:16:04,000 --> 00:16:05,320 we'd see at a basketball court -- 369 00:16:05,320 --> 00:16:07,440 a parquet, a tessera. 370 00:16:07,440 --> 00:16:09,120 And these mountains are amongst 371 00:16:09,120 --> 00:16:12,160 the most unknown in the solar system. 372 00:16:12,160 --> 00:16:15,640 There's no other place that has the textures they have. 373 00:16:15,640 --> 00:16:20,360 So we see Venus as a magical mystery tour. 374 00:16:20,360 --> 00:16:22,680 Relative to what we know about Mars and the moon, 375 00:16:22,680 --> 00:16:24,600 she's still so enigmatic. 376 00:16:24,600 --> 00:16:27,560 We know more about Mercury, thanks to the MESSENGER mission 377 00:16:27,560 --> 00:16:30,120 and now BepiColombo going there, than we do 378 00:16:30,120 --> 00:16:32,360 about our nearest neighbor planet, 379 00:16:32,360 --> 00:16:35,200 which, today, is only 90 million kilometers from Earth, 380 00:16:35,200 --> 00:16:36,800 about five light minutes away, 381 00:16:36,800 --> 00:16:39,120 so you can see her in the sky. 382 00:16:39,120 --> 00:16:42,600 We have evidence that Venus may be doing really exotic things, 383 00:16:42,600 --> 00:16:45,080 such as having volcanoes that erupt. 384 00:16:45,080 --> 00:16:48,800 I wouldn't be surprised if Venus is actively erupting today, 385 00:16:48,800 --> 00:16:50,680 belching gases into its atmosphere 386 00:16:50,680 --> 00:16:52,960 that we could detect. We see evidence of that 387 00:16:52,960 --> 00:16:55,800 in some places that you can see listed here. 388 00:16:55,800 --> 00:16:59,960 So, what if Venus were active today volcanically? 389 00:16:59,960 --> 00:17:02,360 Like our seafloor; like volcanoes 390 00:17:02,360 --> 00:17:05,360 that have recently erupted in the Philippines, like Taal; 391 00:17:05,360 --> 00:17:07,920 like the great volcanoes of the Pacific Ring of Fire. 392 00:17:07,920 --> 00:17:10,200 That would change the way we see that world 393 00:17:10,200 --> 00:17:11,720 and what we can measure. 394 00:17:11,720 --> 00:17:14,960 And that would be a key clue to another dynamic world 395 00:17:14,960 --> 00:17:16,320 like our own. 396 00:17:16,320 --> 00:17:18,240 The other thing about Venus -- 397 00:17:18,240 --> 00:17:21,400 and this is my only kind of strange spaghetti slide -- 398 00:17:21,400 --> 00:17:23,880 is, when we think of Venus -- and our atmosphere, 399 00:17:23,880 --> 00:17:25,440 over on the left, next to Venus', 400 00:17:25,440 --> 00:17:27,760 where spacecraft have gone -- 401 00:17:27,760 --> 00:17:29,560 most of the atmosphere on Venus 402 00:17:29,560 --> 00:17:32,600 is essentially chemically unexplored. 403 00:17:32,600 --> 00:17:34,720 When we look at the chemistry we think we see, 404 00:17:34,720 --> 00:17:37,960 most of it is guesswork from the kind of chemistry lab work 405 00:17:37,960 --> 00:17:40,200 you would have done in high school or college. 406 00:17:40,200 --> 00:17:42,720 And so these squiggles that you see 407 00:17:42,720 --> 00:17:46,000 in the big plot in the middle, they're our best guesstimates 408 00:17:46,000 --> 00:17:49,160 of what might the atmosphere be telling us. 409 00:17:49,160 --> 00:17:52,000 We think it probably doesn't work that way. 410 00:17:52,000 --> 00:17:56,200 We don't have the data, and it's always up to having the data 411 00:17:56,200 --> 00:17:57,360 to ask the questions. 412 00:17:57,360 --> 00:18:00,040 Explorers explore out of curiosity, 413 00:18:00,040 --> 00:18:02,520 collect the information to be there, 414 00:18:02,520 --> 00:18:04,400 to see there, to know there. 415 00:18:04,400 --> 00:18:06,080 We need to do that for Venus. 416 00:18:06,080 --> 00:18:07,800 So, what might we learn? 417 00:18:07,800 --> 00:18:11,400 Well, let's look at our Earth again for a second. What are we? 418 00:18:11,400 --> 00:18:15,840 We're an ocean world with a dynamic atmosphere 419 00:18:15,840 --> 00:18:18,680 full of water vapor and aerosols. 420 00:18:18,680 --> 00:18:21,160 Our planet's controlled by the dynamics of water. 421 00:18:21,160 --> 00:18:22,760 It's why we need to study Earth, 422 00:18:22,760 --> 00:18:24,600 because it informs how we look at these other worlds. 423 00:18:24,600 --> 00:18:26,000 And then there's Venus. 424 00:18:26,000 --> 00:18:27,600 The ultraviolet view you see at right 425 00:18:27,600 --> 00:18:29,520 from the Japanese mission Akatsuki 426 00:18:29,520 --> 00:18:33,920 shows us this beautiful world with mystery chemistry, 427 00:18:33,920 --> 00:18:36,000 with cloud decks that superrotate, 428 00:18:36,000 --> 00:18:37,600 and a surface we don't see. 429 00:18:37,600 --> 00:18:39,600 How does Venus work? 430 00:18:39,600 --> 00:18:43,840 She's really rather brazen and peculiar, if you ask me. 431 00:18:43,840 --> 00:18:46,560 So, when you think of Venus and Earth, 432 00:18:46,560 --> 00:18:48,600 well, they're the only two planets of their type 433 00:18:48,600 --> 00:18:50,240 in our solar system. 434 00:18:50,240 --> 00:18:51,640 And that's important. 435 00:18:51,640 --> 00:18:54,080 They have interiors that may be hot. 436 00:18:54,080 --> 00:18:55,840 They may be convecting. 437 00:18:55,840 --> 00:18:58,960 They have thin crusts that may be deforming, 438 00:18:58,960 --> 00:19:00,400 perhaps volcanoes, 439 00:19:00,400 --> 00:19:04,160 and very limited impact records to look at. 440 00:19:04,160 --> 00:19:05,920 They haven't been around that long -- 441 00:19:05,920 --> 00:19:08,520 their surfaces, that is. 442 00:19:08,520 --> 00:19:11,320 They're a tale of two worlds. 443 00:19:11,320 --> 00:19:14,000 So when we compare them to Jupiter and Saturn, 444 00:19:14,000 --> 00:19:16,680 the big gas giants Neptune and Uranus, 445 00:19:16,680 --> 00:19:19,440 or even to Mercury, Pluto, and the smaller worlds, 446 00:19:19,440 --> 00:19:21,080 they're in a unique class. 447 00:19:21,080 --> 00:19:23,880 In some ways to better know ourselves, 448 00:19:23,880 --> 00:19:27,840 we do need to think about Venus and how she worked in time. 449 00:19:27,840 --> 00:19:29,640 So let's think about it. 450 00:19:29,640 --> 00:19:33,400 Let's play the tape backwards, as Stephen Jay Gould once said. 451 00:19:33,400 --> 00:19:36,800 That early Venus in the region of the solar system 452 00:19:36,800 --> 00:19:38,320 where Earth was, 453 00:19:38,320 --> 00:19:41,520 only about 30, 40 million kilometers from Earth, 454 00:19:41,520 --> 00:19:43,080 probably looked a lot like this. 455 00:19:43,080 --> 00:19:44,640 Like we imagine our early Earth. 456 00:19:44,640 --> 00:19:48,400 A maelstrom of oceans forming, being collected. 457 00:19:48,400 --> 00:19:51,200 Volcanism, giant impacts big enough 458 00:19:51,200 --> 00:19:53,520 to make things bigger than Texas. 459 00:19:53,520 --> 00:19:55,160 This was the early Earth. 460 00:19:55,160 --> 00:19:58,640 And then, after that period of Late Heavy Bombardment, 461 00:19:58,640 --> 00:20:02,320 of oceanic formation, the planet stabilized. 462 00:20:02,320 --> 00:20:06,040 Early Earth, early Venus, and maybe the Earth and Venus 463 00:20:06,040 --> 00:20:08,760 like worlds beyond light-years from our world 464 00:20:08,760 --> 00:20:10,520 that we're now starting to get to know 465 00:20:10,520 --> 00:20:14,000 with missions like TESS, like Kepler, like CHEOPS. 466 00:20:14,000 --> 00:20:17,000 Maybe this kind of early planetary world 467 00:20:17,000 --> 00:20:20,000 is something that we can get to know by looking at Venus. 468 00:20:20,000 --> 00:20:21,960 The records of this on Earth are gone. 469 00:20:21,960 --> 00:20:25,680 That first 600 million years of Earth has been eradicated. 470 00:20:25,680 --> 00:20:28,440 We look at it through the glimmers of history. 471 00:20:28,440 --> 00:20:30,240 May be preserved in the topsy-turvy Mars, 472 00:20:30,240 --> 00:20:32,240 and maybe Venus is the clue. 473 00:20:32,240 --> 00:20:33,400 The Venus of today? 474 00:20:33,400 --> 00:20:35,200 Well, we're not sure. 475 00:20:35,200 --> 00:20:39,920 Maybe it's a volcano scape with active volcanic plains, 476 00:20:39,920 --> 00:20:42,200 with interactions of its big massive atmosphere 477 00:20:42,200 --> 00:20:45,640 with the rocks making minerals that are exotic. 478 00:20:45,640 --> 00:20:47,560 What would the Venusians think? 479 00:20:47,560 --> 00:20:49,840 Well, we don't know. So we want to find out. 480 00:20:49,840 --> 00:20:52,560 That lower 30,000 feet of Venus, 481 00:20:52,560 --> 00:20:54,960 the troposphere of Venus, is as unexplored 482 00:20:54,960 --> 00:20:58,720 as anywhere in the solar system, less well-known than Pluto, 483 00:20:58,720 --> 00:21:01,600 thanks to the magical mission of New Horizons 484 00:21:01,600 --> 00:21:03,640 that Alan Stern led. 485 00:21:03,640 --> 00:21:05,120 So, some of us want to get back. 486 00:21:05,120 --> 00:21:06,920 So what do we want to do? 487 00:21:06,920 --> 00:21:08,480 Well, the first thing we want to do 488 00:21:08,480 --> 00:21:10,960 is compare Venus to the worlds we know. 489 00:21:10,960 --> 00:21:13,240 And when you look at the time history, 490 00:21:13,240 --> 00:21:16,560 you know, as scientists, sometimes we're also historians. 491 00:21:16,560 --> 00:21:18,920 We look at things in the history of epochs 492 00:21:18,920 --> 00:21:21,160 and eras where life was on Earth, 493 00:21:21,160 --> 00:21:23,640 the dinosaurs, the pre-dinosaurs. 494 00:21:23,640 --> 00:21:26,600 You can see the column there in the middle with Earth. 495 00:21:26,600 --> 00:21:29,200 The moon. We have ages defined by impacts. 496 00:21:29,200 --> 00:21:31,040 Likewise on Mars and now Mercury. 497 00:21:31,040 --> 00:21:32,440 Even on Pluto. 498 00:21:32,440 --> 00:21:35,840 On Venus, we have one column with one line. 499 00:21:35,840 --> 00:21:40,640 We can do better because there's a story in there. 500 00:21:40,640 --> 00:21:42,520 And, you know, someone once said, 501 00:21:42,520 --> 00:21:44,200 "Maybe there's a pony in there." 502 00:21:44,200 --> 00:21:46,600 So let's go find the pony that is Venus, 503 00:21:46,600 --> 00:21:48,600 is what I would say to all of you. 504 00:21:48,600 --> 00:21:50,400 And we can do that in many ways. 505 00:21:50,400 --> 00:21:54,480 Now, let's look at the lenses we would use to look for that pony. 506 00:21:54,480 --> 00:21:56,800 In science, we organize questions 507 00:21:56,800 --> 00:21:58,720 and hypotheses through lenses. 508 00:21:58,720 --> 00:22:01,280 The lenses we use -- Was a planet 509 00:22:01,280 --> 00:22:03,240 ever environmentally good enough 510 00:22:03,240 --> 00:22:06,200 to be habitable by the kind of life we understand, 511 00:22:06,200 --> 00:22:08,640 microbial or bigger? 512 00:22:08,640 --> 00:22:09,760 That's a question. 513 00:22:09,760 --> 00:22:11,520 What was the climate state like? 514 00:22:11,520 --> 00:22:13,600 You know, we worry about our climate on Earth, 515 00:22:13,600 --> 00:22:14,920 our environmental history. 516 00:22:14,920 --> 00:22:17,400 The Mars climate story is fascinating. 517 00:22:17,400 --> 00:22:19,760 What was the climate of another atmosphere-bearing planet like? 518 00:22:19,760 --> 00:22:21,680 What was the crust like? 519 00:22:21,680 --> 00:22:23,720 Those landscapes, those volcano scapes. 520 00:22:23,720 --> 00:22:24,960 How did that work? 521 00:22:24,960 --> 00:22:27,880 And how might this world, this planet 522 00:22:27,880 --> 00:22:30,560 be like other worlds that we're going to start seeing 523 00:22:30,560 --> 00:22:32,720 better and better as we go through the '20s 524 00:22:32,720 --> 00:22:36,800 and '30s with telescopes like James Webb, like WFIRST, 525 00:22:36,800 --> 00:22:39,880 like all the ones that'll be launched? 526 00:22:39,880 --> 00:22:43,840 So, for Venus, we can look at all these questions at once. 527 00:22:43,840 --> 00:22:45,760 The next missions to Venus will do that, 528 00:22:45,760 --> 00:22:49,640 and they'll connect Venus to the destiny space of our own planet. 529 00:22:49,640 --> 00:22:52,720 Not tomorrow or a couple generations, 530 00:22:52,720 --> 00:22:55,400 but across the epochs of time. 531 00:22:55,400 --> 00:22:56,840 And so, these are the questions we use. 532 00:22:56,840 --> 00:22:59,480 And one thing I'm reminded -- 100 years ago, 533 00:22:59,480 --> 00:23:02,040 in the front page of The New York Times, a scientist said, 534 00:23:02,040 --> 00:23:04,840 "Life on Venus. We should go look." 535 00:23:04,840 --> 00:23:08,840 That was 100 years ago in the era of, 536 00:23:08,840 --> 00:23:11,440 you know, the beginnings of the Roaring Twenties, 537 00:23:11,440 --> 00:23:13,400 coming out of the First World War. 538 00:23:13,400 --> 00:23:14,800 That's what we were thinking then, 539 00:23:14,800 --> 00:23:16,760 when Robert Goddard first started thinking 540 00:23:16,760 --> 00:23:19,880 about his rockets here in the United States. 541 00:23:19,880 --> 00:23:24,480 The Venus atmosphere in the clouds today 542 00:23:24,480 --> 00:23:27,240 has conditions that are not unlike 543 00:23:27,240 --> 00:23:29,120 those near the surface of the Earth, 544 00:23:29,120 --> 00:23:30,800 except for its chemistry. 545 00:23:30,800 --> 00:23:34,080 Its pressure is like that at the surface of the Earth. 546 00:23:34,080 --> 00:23:36,240 Temperature -- 20 degrees C. 547 00:23:36,240 --> 00:23:37,760 There's chemistry there 548 00:23:37,760 --> 00:23:41,400 with droplets of sulfuric acid and other species. 549 00:23:41,400 --> 00:23:43,760 What if that world could have been habitable 550 00:23:43,760 --> 00:23:45,800 in that region or elsewhere? 551 00:23:45,800 --> 00:23:48,280 Now, we don't know this. This is a pure theory. 552 00:23:48,280 --> 00:23:50,800 Some scientists have worked on some great cases for that. 553 00:23:50,800 --> 00:23:52,800 We just don't know. We don't know 554 00:23:52,800 --> 00:23:56,320 the chemical-boundary conditions to even ask that question. 555 00:23:56,320 --> 00:23:59,000 But what if we could? Would that be worth doing? 556 00:23:59,000 --> 00:24:02,800 Asking about the limits to life as we understand it. 557 00:24:02,800 --> 00:24:06,520 And life on Earth works in many phenomenal places 558 00:24:06,520 --> 00:24:07,560 where you least expect it. 559 00:24:07,560 --> 00:24:08,960 In the deep earth 560 00:24:08,960 --> 00:24:11,840 miles deep underground in mines, life is found. 561 00:24:11,840 --> 00:24:14,440 In hot springs and vents and fumaroles 562 00:24:14,440 --> 00:24:16,680 like at Yellowstone, in Iceland, 563 00:24:16,680 --> 00:24:19,920 in the Azores, in Philippines today at Taal, 564 00:24:19,920 --> 00:24:21,840 life ekes out a living. 565 00:24:21,840 --> 00:24:25,360 It's in the sarcophagus at Chernobyl. 566 00:24:25,360 --> 00:24:27,720 So if we now study life in all of these extremes 567 00:24:27,720 --> 00:24:29,840 through the lenses of these biologists 568 00:24:29,840 --> 00:24:34,480 that look at extremophile life, microbial life, how tough it is, 569 00:24:34,480 --> 00:24:36,640 why not ask about whether this process 570 00:24:36,640 --> 00:24:38,040 could have worked on Venus? 571 00:24:38,040 --> 00:24:41,000 So, when we rack and stack Venus over time, 572 00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:43,680 over the long history of time, what do we see? 573 00:24:43,680 --> 00:24:47,240 Well, if you just took the amount of volume 574 00:24:47,240 --> 00:24:50,640 on a planet in its atmosphere, its oceans, its crust, 575 00:24:50,640 --> 00:24:52,600 where you could stick the kind of life, 576 00:24:52,600 --> 00:24:55,240 the microbial life, that dominates our world -- 577 00:24:55,240 --> 00:24:58,000 we're all too aware of that today in this time -- 578 00:24:58,000 --> 00:24:59,520 what would you see? 579 00:24:59,520 --> 00:25:03,560 Well, this simple graphic shows with the green balls 580 00:25:03,560 --> 00:25:06,480 the amount of volume of places 581 00:25:06,480 --> 00:25:09,240 where microbial life could have been. 582 00:25:09,240 --> 00:25:13,400 Venus has a large real estate today in the atmosphere, 583 00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:15,400 in the past perhaps in oceans, 584 00:25:15,400 --> 00:25:20,200 that Venus may have been a microbial bonanza. 585 00:25:20,200 --> 00:25:22,400 But we don't know. We don't have the records, 586 00:25:22,400 --> 00:25:23,760 the measurements to understand. 587 00:25:23,760 --> 00:25:25,480 On Mars, we think maybe. 588 00:25:25,480 --> 00:25:27,280 It's worth looking and bringing back samples, 589 00:25:27,280 --> 00:25:28,680 to ask that question. 590 00:25:28,680 --> 00:25:30,160 Were those biosignatures preserved? 591 00:25:30,160 --> 00:25:32,160 On Earth, it's everywhere. 592 00:25:32,160 --> 00:25:34,320 On Titan, we're gonna go look with Dragonfly. 593 00:25:34,320 --> 00:25:36,360 Europa, the ocean under the crust, 594 00:25:36,360 --> 00:25:38,400 we've got to go look, with missions like Clipper. 595 00:25:38,400 --> 00:25:42,280 So, what about Venus? If this is even vaguely the case, 596 00:25:42,280 --> 00:25:45,320 this is calling us to the planet Venus. 597 00:25:45,320 --> 00:25:47,000 And then there's the question of water. 598 00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:48,360 In the atmosphere of water, 599 00:25:48,360 --> 00:25:50,360 if you took every little bit of water vapor, 600 00:25:50,360 --> 00:25:51,800 you would squeeze out the same amount 601 00:25:51,800 --> 00:25:54,680 that we have as in the atmosphere of Earth. 602 00:25:54,680 --> 00:25:56,560 But the problem is, on the crust, 603 00:25:56,560 --> 00:25:58,280 in the crust, there is none. 604 00:25:58,280 --> 00:26:01,760 On Earth, there's 100,000 times or more water. 605 00:26:01,760 --> 00:26:04,720 So where is the water? We need to know. 606 00:26:04,720 --> 00:26:07,200 We need missions sent by smart women 607 00:26:07,200 --> 00:26:09,960 and men with great engineering and technology 608 00:26:09,960 --> 00:26:12,720 to go there and ferret out this question -- 609 00:26:12,720 --> 00:26:14,200 Where's the water? 610 00:26:14,200 --> 00:26:16,600 Where is the missing water in the Venus system? 611 00:26:16,600 --> 00:26:17,920 How could we tell? 612 00:26:17,920 --> 00:26:20,160 So, there's a lot of ways of telling. 613 00:26:20,160 --> 00:26:22,440 And, actually, as we speak today, scientists, 614 00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:25,320 including those in New York, Michael Way 615 00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:27,960 and Tony Del Genio, are publishing papers 616 00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:31,080 about what might have been this special Venus. 617 00:26:31,080 --> 00:26:33,800 Venus may have been an ocean world 618 00:26:33,800 --> 00:26:37,720 for longer than any other planet except Earth that we know about. 619 00:26:37,720 --> 00:26:40,600 It may have been. We don't know for sure. 620 00:26:40,600 --> 00:26:42,520 Obviously, that's why we need missions. 621 00:26:42,520 --> 00:26:45,000 But if it were, based on what we can do today 622 00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:47,320 with computer models and glimmers, 623 00:26:47,320 --> 00:26:49,000 wouldn't that be cool? 624 00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:51,600 A world that went through 3 billion years of oceanic history 625 00:26:51,600 --> 00:26:53,680 to turn into the hothouse of today. 626 00:26:53,680 --> 00:26:57,400 So, what we need -- measurements to see this world 627 00:26:57,400 --> 00:26:59,200 in 21st-century light 628 00:26:59,200 --> 00:27:02,520 so the girls and boys, the women and men of the '30s 629 00:27:02,520 --> 00:27:04,760 and '40s will have a place to figure out. 630 00:27:04,760 --> 00:27:07,720 So one of my jobs is to invent that future. 631 00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:11,360 And, today, two missions are candidates 632 00:27:11,360 --> 00:27:14,600 in a competed program that NASA runs called Discovery. 633 00:27:14,600 --> 00:27:17,800 One of them, I'm lucky enough to be part of with my team, 634 00:27:17,800 --> 00:27:21,320 led by women and men smarter than I'll ever be, 635 00:27:21,320 --> 00:27:23,400 which we named after Leonardo da Vinci. 636 00:27:23,400 --> 00:27:25,520 And this is one of two candidate missions 637 00:27:25,520 --> 00:27:27,320 that could fly to Venus in the '20s. 638 00:27:27,320 --> 00:27:30,200 And our mission, DAVINCI+, is a mission 639 00:27:30,200 --> 00:27:32,000 to explore those chemical reservoirs 640 00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:34,400 by going to the atmosphere of the planet, 641 00:27:34,400 --> 00:27:36,160 by measuring its scales 642 00:27:36,160 --> 00:27:37,960 as good as those as a rover on Mars 643 00:27:37,960 --> 00:27:39,600 can measure in that atmosphere. 644 00:27:39,600 --> 00:27:43,720 Our mission is a flying chemistry laboratory rover 645 00:27:43,720 --> 00:27:46,000 that also includes a part of a mission 646 00:27:46,000 --> 00:27:48,520 to orbit the planet and study its clouds 647 00:27:48,520 --> 00:27:51,200 and surface from above, putting all that together 648 00:27:51,200 --> 00:27:53,360 in an observing system to see, 649 00:27:53,360 --> 00:27:55,600 how did the oceans of Venus work, 650 00:27:55,600 --> 00:27:57,320 or were there any? 651 00:27:57,320 --> 00:27:59,320 What was that atmosphere history like? 652 00:27:59,320 --> 00:28:00,840 Why is it in this climate state? 653 00:28:00,840 --> 00:28:02,800 What is the history of that atmosphere? 654 00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:05,000 How would we know a Venus if we saw one around 655 00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:08,440 another star beyond our solar system? 656 00:28:08,440 --> 00:28:11,200 This mission and others being studied in Europe, 657 00:28:11,200 --> 00:28:12,920 in other places in the United States, 658 00:28:12,920 --> 00:28:17,200 in Russia are what we're going to do in the next 20 years. 659 00:28:17,200 --> 00:28:20,520 We don't know which will go. Maybe them all, maybe none. 660 00:28:20,520 --> 00:28:23,360 But if they go, they will change how we see Venus. 661 00:28:23,360 --> 00:28:25,720 So, what would the Venus look like if you were standing on it? 662 00:28:25,720 --> 00:28:28,880 So, last summer, I visited a great volcano 663 00:28:28,880 --> 00:28:31,520 that I happen to know and love in the islands 664 00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:33,800 known as the Azores, part of Portugal. 665 00:28:33,800 --> 00:28:37,040 And this is a view which I've colored the color of Venus 666 00:28:37,040 --> 00:28:38,400 to show you the kind of landscapes 667 00:28:38,400 --> 00:28:40,800 that some of us imagine on Venus today. 668 00:28:40,800 --> 00:28:43,800 Rockscapes of lava and ash and dust 669 00:28:43,800 --> 00:28:45,680 blowing around at high pressure. 670 00:28:45,680 --> 00:28:47,800 This is a view of a place. 671 00:28:47,800 --> 00:28:49,960 And this is maybe what we'd see at Venus. 672 00:28:49,960 --> 00:28:52,160 Our DAVINCI mission could take photographs like this 673 00:28:52,160 --> 00:28:53,880 as we descend through the clouds. 674 00:28:53,880 --> 00:28:56,160 Other missions would look at it differently. 675 00:28:56,160 --> 00:28:59,040 But this may be what the Venus would look like 676 00:28:59,040 --> 00:29:01,440 that we could experience in the next decade. 677 00:29:01,440 --> 00:29:06,120 So, the big why for Venus -- She's the missing link. 678 00:29:06,120 --> 00:29:09,280 We need to measure her state variables. 679 00:29:09,280 --> 00:29:10,680 We need to take stock of her. 680 00:29:10,680 --> 00:29:13,200 There's no meteorites from Venus on Earth. 681 00:29:13,200 --> 00:29:15,600 We need to get into the atmosphere again, 682 00:29:15,600 --> 00:29:17,880 where we haven't been for almost 50 years. 683 00:29:17,880 --> 00:29:19,440 That's the laboratory. 684 00:29:19,440 --> 00:29:21,960 That's the experiment that Mother Nature gave us. 685 00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:24,480 We have the tools, folks. We're ready. 686 00:29:24,480 --> 00:29:26,080 The women and men of today have built those tools. 687 00:29:26,080 --> 00:29:28,800 They're working on Mars. They're going to go to Titan. 688 00:29:28,800 --> 00:29:31,200 We've flown them to the moon. 689 00:29:31,200 --> 00:29:33,000 We're ready to take them to Venus. 690 00:29:33,000 --> 00:29:36,000 We're ready to ask those questions as we speak. 691 00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:38,160 So our kids will see the answers. 692 00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:39,920 We're ready to take Venus, 693 00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:44,000 where we define a whole zone relative to parent stars, 694 00:29:44,000 --> 00:29:46,280 and make it pop and come alive. 695 00:29:46,280 --> 00:29:47,960 Today, astrophysicists, 696 00:29:47,960 --> 00:29:50,960 looking at what they can tell about planets 697 00:29:50,960 --> 00:29:53,920 around nearby stars, have defined a Venus zone. 698 00:29:53,920 --> 00:29:55,720 Over on the left, you see the parent stars -- 699 00:29:55,720 --> 00:29:58,040 our sun right there, brown dwarf. 700 00:29:58,040 --> 00:30:02,760 6,000 degrees Kelvin is what our parent star does. 701 00:30:02,760 --> 00:30:05,600 We live with that star, and you see Venus, Earth, and Mars 702 00:30:05,600 --> 00:30:08,480 if you draw a line across from the left to the right. 703 00:30:08,480 --> 00:30:10,240 Venus is in the Venus zone, 704 00:30:10,240 --> 00:30:13,800 a zone that could have once been habitable with oceans, 705 00:30:13,800 --> 00:30:17,200 all the right stuff that Earth has, that Mars may have had, 706 00:30:17,200 --> 00:30:18,760 but doesn't anymore. 707 00:30:18,760 --> 00:30:21,720 We're discovering that Venus zone may ebb and flow. 708 00:30:21,720 --> 00:30:24,600 But Venuses may be the former Earths. 709 00:30:24,600 --> 00:30:27,600 We may be able to see more Venuses than Earths 710 00:30:27,600 --> 00:30:29,720 by looking at the upper atmospheres of planets 711 00:30:29,720 --> 00:30:33,400 around nearby suns with the James Webb Telescope 712 00:30:33,400 --> 00:30:35,320 and the telescopes that come beyond. 713 00:30:35,320 --> 00:30:38,560 We're celebrating 30 years of the Hubble Space Telescope. 714 00:30:38,560 --> 00:30:41,000 In a year or so, we'll launch the James Webb. 715 00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:43,200 And then, coming in the late '20s and '30s, 716 00:30:43,200 --> 00:30:45,800 more telescopes will see farther 717 00:30:45,800 --> 00:30:48,880 into this magical zone of exoworlds. 718 00:30:48,880 --> 00:30:52,160 They may be everywhere, and a large fraction of them 719 00:30:52,160 --> 00:30:53,920 that we can see may be Venus-like. 720 00:30:53,920 --> 00:30:58,560 So to understand them, we need to understand our own Venus. 721 00:30:58,560 --> 00:31:00,960 So, from the top down, from the top of the atmosphere, 722 00:31:00,960 --> 00:31:02,600 from the surface, 723 00:31:02,600 --> 00:31:06,400 we will know that world so we can see what the Venuses 724 00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:09,000 out there beyond our solar system are telling us. 725 00:31:09,000 --> 00:31:11,400 And those exoplanets that look like Venus 726 00:31:11,400 --> 00:31:14,360 may show us different states of the Venus 727 00:31:14,360 --> 00:31:18,240 that today is that hothouse, that climate run amuck. 728 00:31:18,240 --> 00:31:20,560 So, coupling what our telescopes, 729 00:31:20,560 --> 00:31:22,480 our astrophysics tells us, 730 00:31:22,480 --> 00:31:24,600 what our ground-based telescopes tell us, 731 00:31:24,600 --> 00:31:27,560 to the Venus we can go explore that's just next door, 732 00:31:27,560 --> 00:31:30,200 five light minutes away, is going to change 733 00:31:30,200 --> 00:31:33,680 how we see ourselves in the solar system, I predict. 734 00:31:33,680 --> 00:31:37,000 So, I would say to you, as we think about Venus through time, 735 00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:39,600 over 4-plus billion years, 736 00:31:39,600 --> 00:31:42,240 can we afford not to visit her soon? 737 00:31:42,240 --> 00:31:44,840 We learn by analogy as we explore. 738 00:31:44,840 --> 00:31:46,600 We go to the deeps of the oceans, 739 00:31:46,600 --> 00:31:48,400 to the mountains, to the volcanoes. 740 00:31:48,400 --> 00:31:51,200 We do those things as people and as explorers. 741 00:31:51,200 --> 00:31:54,760 Venus presents an exploration opportunity for us 742 00:31:54,760 --> 00:31:57,400 to extend ourselves as women and men 743 00:31:57,400 --> 00:31:59,880 as we thought about 500 years ago. 744 00:31:59,880 --> 00:32:02,240 500 years ago, we orbited this Earth. 745 00:32:02,240 --> 00:32:05,160 Daring mission by Magellan and Elcano. 746 00:32:05,160 --> 00:32:08,920 500 years ago, da Vinci left his legacy -- vision, 747 00:32:08,920 --> 00:32:11,400 art, science, technology. 748 00:32:11,400 --> 00:32:13,000 We're still inspired by it. 749 00:32:13,000 --> 00:32:16,440 Venus is a masterpiece as yet unfinished. 750 00:32:16,440 --> 00:32:19,880 The discoverers are ready to build on what we know, 751 00:32:19,880 --> 00:32:21,520 to build on what we are going to know 752 00:32:21,520 --> 00:32:24,920 from great new telescopes, to put her into her place 753 00:32:24,920 --> 00:32:27,920 and inform how we work. 754 00:32:27,920 --> 00:32:32,160 Today, in this era of exploration in space by NASA, 755 00:32:32,160 --> 00:32:35,600 by Europeans and Japanese and Australians, Canadians, 756 00:32:35,600 --> 00:32:38,400 Russians, Chinese, all the peoples of this planet, 757 00:32:38,400 --> 00:32:41,000 we explore to inspire, innovate, 758 00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:43,840 to interconnect ourselves beyond our home planet. 759 00:32:43,840 --> 00:32:46,000 And as the Rolling Stones once said, 760 00:32:46,000 --> 00:32:47,440 maybe time waits for no one. 761 00:32:47,440 --> 00:32:49,200 I would say Venus waits for no one. 762 00:32:49,200 --> 00:32:53,440 We have to let our wonderment get us back there. 763 00:32:53,440 --> 00:32:55,040 As we look at the night sky 764 00:32:55,040 --> 00:32:57,520 and imagine women on the moon in a few years, 765 00:32:57,520 --> 00:33:00,640 which I know is gonna happen, and it's gonna be amazing 766 00:33:00,640 --> 00:33:03,880 as we do that, there's little Venus hiding behind the moon, 767 00:33:03,880 --> 00:33:07,840 calling us, beckoning us, "Come and see me, too. 768 00:33:07,840 --> 00:33:09,800 I have a lesson to tell you about." 769 00:33:09,800 --> 00:33:12,000 I promise you, people listening to this, 770 00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:14,080 that lesson is going to be spectacular. 771 00:33:14,080 --> 00:33:16,000 It's going to be beyond our wildest dreams. 772 00:33:16,000 --> 00:33:17,560 We just have to go. 773 00:33:17,560 --> 00:33:20,920 So, let me conclude by saying thank you for listening. 774 00:33:20,920 --> 00:33:23,080 Thanks to all the explorers that have given us the wisdom 775 00:33:23,080 --> 00:33:25,400 to consider even doing this stuff. 776 00:33:25,400 --> 00:33:27,160 On to Venus. 777 00:33:27,160 --> 00:33:27,160