From the world of science
Like other planets, Venus has been orbiting the sun, routinely and in a remote realm, for at least four billion years. None in the ancient world wondered what its atmosphere is made up of, how its terrain is, nor how the solar wind affects that planet because its proximity to the sun. Since it is one of the brightest objects in the solar system Venus has been seen and sung about since time immemorial. The Romans once built temples for it, and worshipped it as symbolic of beauty and growth. Later, they identified Venus with the Greek goddess of Love, Aphrodite, which is why Horace described her as <mater saeva Cupidinum> (the cruel mother of Cupid). The poet Swinburne lauded Venus thus:
Lo, this is she that was the world’s delight;
The old gray years were parcels of her might;
The strewings on the ways wherein she trod
Were the twain seasons of the day and night.
But little did anybody suspect the hellish hotness (surface temperature 700+ degrees F) in which shimmering Venus exists.
The magic of mythology was transmuted into crass data in the 1970s when Soviet space probes (Venera) began to intrude into the eons of Vesnuian solitude. And on December 4, 1978, the Orbiter of Pioneer Venus I began to circle that closest of the planets. Now we know that there are frequent lightning flashes in the very dense atmosphere of carbon dioxide that envelops that once-venerated Goddess of Love, which also contains significant amounts of argon-36. The artificial info-collecting satellite continued to orbit the planet for fourteen more years.
It has long been known that Venus takes about 225 earth days to go once around the sun. But now we know that its surface rocks are basaltic with three large impact craters, the Venusian clouds zoom at more than 200 miles an hour, that it has a cluster of volcanic domes from which lavas have flown over the ages to fill in the tectonically formed basins. We now have maps of the planet’s topography, with names like Lakshmi Planum, Ba’het Patera, Sacajawea Patera, Corona Derecto, and Mylitta Fluctus. Such details don’t issue from philosophical discussions.
Spurts of Thought 