All the planets of our Solar System: an explanation in 20 minutes

Eight completely dissimilar planets, born four and a half billion years ago from a single cloud of gas and dust. A scorching stone sinking into the glow of the sun. Hell's furnace beneath acid clouds. A blue oasis of life, a rust-colored desert with frozen rivers. A storm of gas with an eternal hurricane. The Lord of the Rings A giant frozen planet lying on its side. The dark blue world of the fastest winds in the universe. Today we will embark on a journey through the entire Solar System. From the first planet to the eighth. In 20 minutes, you'll learn the most important and astonishing facts about each of them. Fasten your seatbelts. We're starting from the Sun and moving outward. First stop — Mercury. The smallest planet in the Solar System and the one closest to our Sun. Its diameter is only 4,880 kilometers. It is smaller than some moons, for example, Ganymede and Titan. Mercury is a world of extremes. Due to the near absence of atmosphere, The temperature variations here are the greatest in the solar system. During the day, the surface heats up to 430 degrees. And at night it cools down to minus 180. Between the heat that melts lead and the cold that freezes the air, More than 600 degrees of difference. Meanwhile, Mercury is full of surprises. Despite its proximity to the Sun, within its polar craters, where sunlight never shines Water ice is concealed. A day here lasts longer than a year. The planet orbits the Sun in 88 Earth days. And a full solar day on it lasts 176. Beneath the surface lies an abnormally massive iron core. occupying about 85% of the planet's radius. In essence, Mercury is a metallic sphere. encased in a thin stone shell. Scientists are still debating where the rest of the planet went. Perhaps it was disrupted by an ancient catastrophic collision. Moreover, Mercury is slowly contracting as its interior cools. Giant step-like wrinkles several kilometers high are visible on its surface. Let us add a few more details to the portrait of the first planet. Mercury moves faster along its orbit than any other planet. at an average speed of 47 kilometers per second for which he earned the name of the swift Roman messenger god. His movement is so unusual, what at the time helped verify Einstein's theory of relativity. Mercury's orbit slowly rotates in space, And this rotation could not be fully explained by Newton's laws. Only taking into account the curvature of spacetime near the Sun put everything in place. A spectator on the surface of Mercury would be treated to a fantastic spectacle. Due to the combination of an elongated orbit and slow rotation, At certain points on the planet, the Sun rises, stops, recedes backward beyond the horizon and rises again. A double sunrise, a phenomenon you will never see anywhere else in the Solar System. The second planet is Venus. And this is perhaps the most cruel deception in the Solar System. She shines as a beautiful morning star in the heavens. brighter than all other celestial bodies after the Sun and the Moon. In size and mass, it is almost a twin of Earth. But beneath its dense clouds lies a real hell. The atmosphere of carbon dioxide exerts a pressure on the surface 92 times greater than Earth's. at a depth of kilometers in the ocean. The runaway greenhouse effect heated the planet to 470 degrees. Venus is hotter than Mercury, even though it is twice as far from the Sun. It is the hottest planet in the system, and its heat never diminishes, neither during the day nor at night. The clouds of Venus consist of droplets of sulfuric acid. Acid rain is falling from the sky, evaporating in the scorching air before reaching the Earth. The planet is rotating in the opposite direction. The sun rises in the west here. And incredibly slowly. A day lasts 243 Earth days. Longer than a Venusian year. The Soviet Venus series spacecraft, the only ones in history to have landed on its surface, They didn't last more than two hours in that hell. before they were crushed and melted. The most alarming thing about Venus – that billions of years ago it may have resembled Earth with oceans and a moderate climate, while the greenhouse effect has not yet gone out of control. This is a formidable reminder of the fact that How fragile the climate balance is. Paradoxically, it is precisely this hellish planet may turn out to be the first one, Where will humanity build an inhabited base? beyond the Earth and the Moon. At an altitude of about 50 kilometers above the scorching surface, in the upper layers of Venus's atmosphere, Temperature and pressure are almost Earth-like. This is one of the most comfortable places in the Solar System. beyond our planet Engineers are seriously working out the concepts floating airship platforms, drifting in the clouds of Venus. Moreover, ordinary terrestrial air in a dense carbon dioxide atmosphere is a lifting gas. The dome would float by itself, filled with him. like a helium balloon in the earthly sky. Interest in Venus flared up with renewed vigor in the 2020s. Possible traces of phosphine gas were found in its clouds. which is produced on Earth primarily living organisms. The discovery remains controversial. but the very idea of microbes, hovering in the acid clouds of a hellish planet, forced scientists to look at our neighboring planet in a new way, Several new missions are already being prepared for her. The third planet—our home, Earth. And on a cosmic scale, she is a true wonder. The only known place in the universe, where life exists, the only planet in the system with liquid water on the surface. Oceans cover 71% of its surface area. The only one with an atmosphere breathable for life and plate tectonics, constantly renewing the surface. We were incredibly lucky with the ADES. Earth is at the ideal distance. from a calm, stable star in the so-called habitable zone, where water does not freeze and does not boil. Good luck with the defense as well. Molten iron core generates a powerful magnetic field deflecting the deadly solar wind and cosmic radiation. The ozone layer blocks harsh ultraviolet radiation. and not unusually large Moon, born according to the main version from the fragments of the collision of the young Earth with a body the size of Mars, stabilizes the tilt of the Earth's axis. Without it, the planet's climate would wildly fluctuate. Developing complex life is almost impossible. Earth is a winning lottery ticket in the space lottery, where almost all other numbers are losing. The more we learn about other worlds, the more obvious it becomes How unique is our own. Several facts about the House, which not everyone knows. Earth is the densest planet in the Solar System. It is not a perfect sphere. Its rotation slightly bulges it at the equator. so the equatorial diameter more than 40 kilometers greater than the polar. The days on Earth are gradually getting longer. The Moon, causing tides, The planet's rotation is gradually slowing down. and hundreds of millions of years ago The day lasted noticeably less than 24 hours. The Moon itself each year it moves away from us by almost 4 centimeters, and if you look at Earth from deep space, It turns into a tiny pale blue dot. This is exactly how the Voyager 1 spacecraft photographed her. from a distance of 6 billion kilometers. This photograph became one of the most famous in history. All of humanity, all its wars, empires, joys, and tragedies fit into a single bluish pixel on it hanging in a beam of sunlight. The fourth planet is Mars. The Red Legend, stirring humanity Not the first century anymore. He acquired his rusty color due to iron oxides. covering the entire surface. In essence, Mars just rusted. This is a world of magnificent records. Here rises the largest volcano Olympus Solar System over 21 kilometers in height almost three times the height of Everest. And a grand canyon stretches out Valles Marineris, 4,000 kilometers long which would stretch across the Earth from Moscow to Lake Baikal. Today Mars is a cold, dry desert. with an average temperature of minus 60 degrees and a rarefied atmosphere 160 times thinner than Earth's. But it wasn't always like this. Billions of years ago across the surface of Mars rivers flowed, lakes rippled and perhaps an entire ocean covered the northern hemisphere. Traces of ancient river channels, deltas, and shorelines They are still visible. Losing its magnetic field, The planet lost most of its atmosphere as well. which was gradually blown away by the solar wind. And some of the water had partially evaporated into space. Partially frozen in polar caps and subsurface ice. The question is whether life had time to arise on wet ancient Mars. remains one of the foremost in science. It is precisely they who solve it, the rovers. roaming across the red sands right now. And Mars is the leading candidate to the first landing of a human on another planet. And perhaps this landing will occur within our lifetime. The red planet also has its quirks. Two of its tiny satellites, Phobos and Deimos, They resemble potatoes more than the Moon. Probably captured asteroids. Phobos is doomed. It descends slowly. and after several tens of millions of years will be torn apart by Mars's tidal forces, possibly forming a ring around the planet. Dust devils wander across the Martian plains, vortices up to 8 kilometers in height. And every few years, the entire planet becomes enveloped global dust storms months that obscure the Sun. Exactly such a storm in 2018 destroyed the legendary Mars rover Opportunity. Martian sunsets, on the other hand, look surreal. Due to the peculiarities of light scattering in a dusty atmosphere The sky turns blue at the horizon. On the red planet, sunsets are blue. exactly the opposite compared to Earth. Beyond Mars's orbit begins the realm of the giants and the fifth planet, Jupiter, opens it, undisputed king of the solar system This gas giant weighs 2.5 times more all the other planets combined More than 1,300 Earth-sized planets could fit inside it. Jupiter has no solid surface. It is a giant ball made of hydrogen and helium. within whose depths pressure compresses hydrogen to the state of molten metal. Despite their monstrous size, It rotates faster than any other planet. A day here lasts less than 10 hours. And this rapid rotation drives circulation in its atmosphere. Eternal storms. The most famous of them is the Great Red Spot. A hurricane larger than the entire Earth, raging for at least several centuries. Jupiter has the strongest magnetic field. among the planets and their retinue of dozens of satellites, the four largest, of which Galileo discovered the first four in 1610. These moons are worlds unto themselves. Io, the volcanic moon, erupting lava from hundreds of volcanoes. Icy Europa, beneath whose crust an ocean of liquid water laps one of the most promising places to search for life. Giant Ganymede, larger than Mercury. And the ancient cratered Calypso. Jupiter acts as a gravitational shield for the Solar System, by attracting many comets and asteroids with its gravity, which otherwise could have threatened the inner planets, including us. Humanity once witnessed this shield in action with its own eyes. In 1994, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, broken apart by Jupiter's gravity into two dozen fragments, crashed into the planet before the eyes of all the telescopes in the world. The explosions left dark scars in the giant's atmosphere, as large as Earth. visible for months. A vivid demonstration of the impacts Jupiter absorbs. His inner life is fascinating. The Juno probe, operating in orbit around the giant planet I found out that Jupiter's core is not compact, but blurred. as if dissolved in the surrounding metallic hydrogen. Perhaps the remnant of an ancient collision with a whole protoplanet. Jupiter's auroras are the most powerful in the Solar System. They are hundreds of times more energetic than terrestrial ones and never fade out. constantly encircling the giant's poles with shining crowns. The sixth planet is Saturn. The most beautiful spectacle in the Solar System. His magnificent rings stretch for hundreds of thousands of kilometers, remaining remarkably delicate all the while in places just a few dozen meters They consist of countless particles of water ice, from dust particles to boulders the size of a house. Perhaps fragments of a satellite or a comet, shattered by the planet's tidal forces. Rings are not eternal. They slowly fall onto Saturn and may disappear after hundreds of millions of years. We are lucky to live in an era when we can admire them. Saturn itself is the second-largest giant in the system. and the planet with the lowest density. It is lighter than water and would float on the surface in a hypothetical giant ocean. Like Jupiter, Saturn is a world of storms and records. The winds here reach speeds of up to 1,800 kilometers per hour. And at the North Pole, a mysterious, persistent vortex reigns. a regular hexagonal shape larger than Earth Phenomena not found anywhere else. The Saturnian satellite family – the richest in the system, with over 140 known moons. Among them is Titan—the only moon with a dense atmosphere. with sour cream rivers and seas on the surface, and tiny Enceladus, from whose cracks geysers erupt from the subsurface ocean ejecting water directly into space. Both of these worlds are among the primary targets in the search for extraterrestrial life. Studying Saturn has gifted science and one of the most dramatic endings in the history of cosmonautics. The Cassini station, having operated in the Saturn system for 13 years, In 2017, it completed its mission by intentionally descending into the planet's atmosphere. The scientists took this step to eliminate even the slightest risk. Contamination of the potentially habitable Enceladus and Titan with terrestrial microbes. The device transmitted data until the very last second. until it was crushed and vaporized by the depths of the giant. Among his legacy is the discovery that Enceladus's geysers contain hydrogen and organic molecules that is, there is water in the subsurface ocean of this moon, both a source of energy and a building material for life. In the 2030s, an eight-rotor drone named "Dragonfly" will be sent to Titan. that will fly from place to place in the satellite's dense atmosphere. The first flying laboratory in history on a celestial body of this type. The seventh planet—Uranus—is the strangest member of the planetary family. This icy giant, composed of hydrogen, helium, and an icy mantle, rotating on its side, composed of water, ammonia, and methane Its axis is tilted at 98 degrees, so it rolls along its orbit like a ball on a track. Probably due to an ancient collision with a large body that tipped the planet over. Because of this, Uranus has the most extreme seasons in the system. Each pole faces the Sun for 42 Earth years. And then plunges into continuous night for 42 years. Uranus is the champion of cold. Its atmospheric temperature drops to minus 224 degrees, even lower than that of the more distant Neptune. Scientists suspect that the planet, for some reason, emits almost no internal heat. Another unsolved mystery. His calm turquoise appearance is deceptive. Beneath the upper haze, winds and storms rage, while in the depths, paraschёtum thrives. Pressure can compress carbon into diamonds, which then rain down toward the core. Uranus was the first planet discovered through a telescope. William Herschel discovered it in 1781, doubling the known boundaries of the Solar System at once. Uranus remains the least explored planet. The only spacecraft, Voyager 2, flew by it just once, in 1986. By the way, the discovery of Uranus is associated with a humorous historical anecdote. Herschel, wishing to flatter King George III, suggested naming the new planet Georgium Sidus. And for almost 70 years in Britain, it was officially named in honor of the monarch, while the rest of the world gradually adopted the mythological name Uranus. The satellites of the planet also stand out from the general pattern. Unlike the Moon, other planets are named after figures from classical mythology, The moons of Uranus are named after characters from Shakespeare and Alexander Pope—Titania, Ariel, Miranda, and Umbriel. Especially noteworthy is Miranda—a small satellite with the most peculiar topography in the Solar System. as if assembled from incompatible pieces. According to one version, in the past he was shattered by a blow and reassembled from the fragments. Scientists are strongly urging to send a full-scale orbital mission to Uranus. This sideways world, with its mysteries, deserves more than a single fleeting visit 40 years ago. And finally, the eighth planet—Neptune, the dark blue guardian of the outskirts. It is so distant that sunlight takes more than four hours to reach it, and one orbit around the Sun takes 165 Earth years. Neptune has managed to complete only one full orbit since its discovery in 1846. The story of its discovery is unique—it is the only planet found at the tip of a pen. Astronomers have noticed that Uranus is deviating from its calculated path, as if being pulled by an invisible mass. The position of the unknown planet was calculated mathematically, and Neptune was discovered exactly where the equations had predicted. It was the greatest triumph of celestial mechanics. Despite receiving negligible amounts of solar heat, Neptune is the windiest world in the solar system. Here, hurricanes accelerate to 2,100 kilometers per hour, faster than the speed of sound. Where the planet gets the energy for such storms is another mystery. Although it is known that Neptune, unlike Uranus, emits 2.5 times more heat from within than it receives from the Sun. Its largest moon, Triton, is the only major moon in the system that orbits in the opposite direction to its planet's rotation. Most likely, it's a captured alien from the Kuiper Belt. Nitrogen geysers operate on Triton, and it is slowly approaching Neptune, and in billions of years it will be torn apart by Neptune's tidal forces. possibly giving the planet new rings. Like Uranus, Neptune has been visited up close by only one Earth-born emissary—the ever-diligent Voyager 2. reached it in 1989, twelve years after the start. Then the instrument captured a large dark spot in the planet's atmosphere—a giant storm the size of Earth. which, unlike its long-lived Jovian red counterpart, turned out to be short-lived. A few years later, the Hubble Telescope no longer detected it, but found new spots in other locations. Storms on Neptune are born and die like bubbles in a boiling pot. Diamond rains occur deep within the planet, just as they do on Uranus, according to calculations. Carbon is compressed under monstrous pressure into crystals sinking toward the core. This process has even been reproduced in terrestrial laboratories by compressing plastic with powerful lasers and producing microscopic diamonds. That's the whole eight. But before concluding the journey, let's answer a question that has surely occurred to many. What about Pluto? From 1930 to 2006, it was considered the ninth planet. while astronomers had not yet discovered numerous objects similar to it in the Kuiper Belt, including Eridu, nearly equal to it in size. It became clear that either there must be dozens of planets, or the concept itself needs to be clarified. The International Astronomical Union chose the second definition, and Pluto became a dwarf planet. that does not make it any less interesting. The spacecraft New Horizons, which flew past it, revealed a breathtaking world with nitrogen glaciers, with watery ice mountains and a thin bluish atmosphere. And since we've reached the outskirts, let's say a few words about where the Solar System actually ends. Beyond Neptune lies the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy bodies, among which, besides Pluto, other dwarf planets also reside. Eris, Haumea with its elongated shape and ring, Makemake. Some astronomers suspect that the peculiarities in the orbits of distant objects in the belt may indicate the existence of another yet undiscovered ninth planet, a massive world hidden in darkness hundreds of astronomical units from the Sun. They have been looking for her for not the first year, but so far unsuccessfully. And even farther, at distances up to a light-year away, The system is enveloped by the Oort cloud. a spherical reservoir made of trillions of cometary nuclei the true boundary of our Sun's domain. Thus, eight planets are merely the illuminated stage of a vast theater, the greater part of which sinks into darkness behind the scenes. Finally, let's take a look at our system as a whole. Let's compile the table of records from our journey. The smallest and fastest planet is Mercury. The hottest planet is Venus. The densest and only inhabited one is Earth. The highest mountain is on Mars. Jupiter is the largest planet and has the strongest magnetic field. Saturn has the most luxurious rings and the lowest density. The most unusual tilt and the harshest cold are found on Uranus. The fastest winds are on Neptune. Each world has its own calling card, and none of them repeat each other. All eight planets were born from a single protoplanetary disk, But fate led them down completely different paths. Closer to the Sun, where the heat blew away the light gases, Compact stone worlds have formed. Beyond the snow line, where water and volatile substances froze, giants grew. One stone world burned in a greenhouse hell, The second one rusted and dried up, the third bloomed with life, although their starting conditions were painfully similar. Perhaps the main lesson of traveling through the solar system lies precisely in this. A habitable world is not the rule, but an extremely rare exception. the result of a confluence of dozens of circumstances. Eight planets – eight destinies, and only one of them led to the emergence of living beings, capable of surveying the entire family of worlds and telling one another about it. Protect the third planet. No other such objects have been found in the observable universe so far. And let's stay in touch.