Name: The Universe: Climate Disasters Destroy Earth's Neighboring Planets (Season 6) | History
Uploaded: 2020-03-23T02:30:25.000Z
Duration: 6 min
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Adverbs of manner

NARRATOR: Our solar system was profoundly

shaped by the chaotic collisions and bombardments

But as the planets finally eased into stable orbits

3.8 billion years ago, new threats arose.

And in some cases, they were as bad as anything

ALEX FILIPPENKO: Catastrophes in the solar system

didn't end with the era of Late Heavy Bombardment.

There have been catastrophes since that time.

Asteroids and comets can pummel into planets.

NARRATOR: The Red Planet has been ravaged at least five

times by episodes of catastrophic volcanism,

giving Mars a unique complexion unlike anything

the shield volcanoes on Mars are similar to some volcanoes here

You've got a large magma chamber beneath the surface

that's erupting lots of lava onto the surface,

However, on Mars, these types of volcanoes are 10 to 100 times

these eruption events that are occurring here,

And over time, the whole surface gets filled in with this lava.

major volcanoes, including Olympus Mons, the largest

This towering relic provides an eerie glimpse

we can tell how old things are by looking at how many

then there has been relatively little time for craters

to build up, and so we see a surface that's

And so, through crater dating and through careful mapping

of the Martian surface, it looks like there

NARRATOR: Just as with shield volcanoes on Earth,

magma chambers rose to the surface of Mars,

But there was a key difference between Earth's shield

never large-scale plate tectonics of the type

And so in Mars, when a volcano gets going,

it just sits there and keeps piling lava out and out

and out, and it builds up enormous shield

So, for example, the volcanic islands of Hawaii

are in a chain because the plate is moving north,

But on Mars, it's the same island all the time,

and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

NARRATOR: Massive volcanism radically changed the surface

But it wasn't the only terrestrial planet

that fell victim to episodes of extreme homegrown violence.

Our closest planetary neighbor, Venus, may

But something transformed Venus into Earth's evil twin.

through its thick atmosphere, you'd see that about 90%

of the surface of Venus is covered by solidified lava

And the thick, noxious atmosphere consists mostly

of carbon dioxide, and it has an atmospheric pressure about 90

So if a human were suddenly placed on the surface of Venus,

he would be baked and very quickly totally crushed.

NARRATOR: The hellish conditions on Venus

could have been caused by an extreme runaway greenhouse

to the oceans of Venus, if they were there to begin with?

and that led to more evaporation of the oceans,

increasing the water vapor content of the atmosphere.

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The Universe: Climate Disasters Destroy Earth's Neighboring Planets (Season 6) | History

enormous

extreme

catastrophic

climate