There’s been a few probes sent over, and the link lists a lot of “got a few pictures before being crushed by pressure” because the surface is so harsh. If we were to land another probe there, assuming we managed to land right next to where the old ones landed, would there be anything left? Or would the pressure and wind have scoured away any trace?
Looking at the ideal gas law,
p·v = R·T
(v
is the specific volume, the inverse of the mass density), I’d say beside the pressurep
, i.e. the weight of the atmosphere above a point, it’s at least the temperatureT
that is quite different between Earth and Venus. An other factor is the compressibility of the fluid; our air is quite compressible, the atmospheric pressure is quite low and the ideal gas law thus gives a good approximation.As an atmosphere consisting of multi-atomic fluids, on Venus mainly CO_2, in an
oversupercritical state is far beyond what can be considered to be an ideal gas (low pressure, single-atomic gas), there are several other factors to be taken into account. The van der Waals law or the Clausius law are usually models to choose when dealing with real gases. However, as mentioned, the atmosphere is in anoversupercritical state, i.e. beyond the critical temperature and pressure, the fluids are not in gaseous state, thus an even more complex material model is needed, to describe its behaviour.But to give an idea of the effect: When you measure the pressure and the density of the water of an ocean in different depth, you’ll notice the pressure increases linearly with depth, while the mass density of the water remains almost constant. Its low compressibility is why water often is treated as an ‘incompressible’ fluid. Similarly, this may work in an
oversupercritical fluid, as it has some properties that are similar to gases and some, e.g. lower compressibility, that are more similar to liquids.