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Why is Venus called Earth's evil twin?

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NASA.

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We Asked a NASA Scientist.

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Venus and Earth are sometimes called twins

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because they're pretty much about the same size.

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Venus is almost as big as Earth.

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They also formed in the same inner part of the solar system.

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Venus is in fact our closest neighbor to Earth.

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So they were formed in the same part of the solar system,

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made out of the same materials.

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They're about the same size.

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So you would think that they would have turned out very, very similar.

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But what happened is somewhere along the way,

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they went two very different paths.

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Some people like to say Venus went bad or something went wrong.

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I like to say that somewhere along the way, something good happened on Earth.

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But on Venus, what happened is its large, thick carbon dioxide

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atmosphere is driving a greenhouse effect.

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In fact, it's so hot on Venus that you can melt lead.

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The temperatures on the surface of Venus are over 900 degrees Fahrenheit,

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and then Venus is covered in a 15 mile thick layer of clouds.

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And those clouds are made of sulfuric acid.

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So it is a crazy place, but really interesting.

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And we really want to understand why Venus and Earth turned out so differently.

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So NASA and ESA are embarking on a decade of Venus,

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where together we're sending three missions

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where we're all going to learn more

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about how Venus formed, how it evolved, and why it's so different from Earth.

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So why is Venus called Earth's evil twin?

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Well, they're twins because they're the same size

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and they formed of the same materials.

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But Venus is such a hot and crazy place, really not hospitable to life.

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So that's why sometimes she's called our evil twin.