Why is Venus called earths evil twin?
Venus: Earth’s evil twin As the first mission in a decade reaches toxic, red-hot Venus, Steve Connor asks, what can we learn from our nearest neighbour? Venus is sometimes known as Earth’s evil twin sister. Its atmosphere is a suffocating mix of carbon dioxide and sulphuric acid, its temperatures soar above 465C – enough to melt lead – and the crushing pressure at its surface is 90 times greater than on Earth. Yet Venus is in many ways just like Earth. It is a relatively small, rocky planet orbiting at roughly the same distance from the Sun. Like Earth, Venus is within the “Goldilocks zone” of the Solar System, which in theory should be neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water, and hence life, to exist. But something happened to Venus that turned it into the hellish place it is today. Rather than possessing oceans of liquid water and a life-sustaining atmosphere, Venus is a dry, hot place with a runaway greenhouse effect that traps heat tightly to its surface. For all its similari
