Today we talk about Venus, Earth’s "evil twin" and the undisputed inferno of the solar system.

At first glance, Venus sounds almost identical to Earth - matching nearly our exact size, mass, and rocky composition. But beneath its thick, impenetrable blanket of yellow clouds lies a planetary nightmare. Trapped in the grip of an extreme runaway greenhouse effect, Venus boasts surface temperatures soaring past 870°F (465°C) - hot enough to easily melt lead - and an atmospheric pressure roughly 90 times that of Earth, crushing down with the force of being nearly 3,000 feet deep in the ocean. In this episode, we explore how a world that may have once harbored temperate oceans transformed into a toxic, scorched cauldron of superheated carbon dioxide and corrosive sulfuric acid rain.

We’re breaking down the bizarre physics of this backward-s ...