Venus's mountains are made of metal
Snowflakes of lead and bismuth drift down on Venus. Seriously!
Imagine standing on a mountain peak that looks exactly like the Alps
Gut call — how extreme does this actually get?
Reality tends to overshoot. Pick your ceiling.
- Snowflakes of lead and bismuth drift down on Venus. Seriously!
- From a distance, these mountains look just like the snow-capped Alps.
- If you stood on the summit, the air would be a thick, soupy carbon dioxide haze, and the ground would be a shimmering, toxic sheet of industrial-gr…
Snow on Venus would melt your face off before it hit the ground. On the highest mountain peaks of our sister planet, the 'snow' is actually a thin layer of heavy metal.
Venus is hot enough to melt lead at its surface. This heat vaporizes metals like galena and bismuthinite, turning them into a metallic mist that rises into the atmosphere.
As this mist reaches the cooler mountain tops—which are still over 800 degrees Fahrenheit—the metal condenses. It settles onto the rocks as a shiny, reflective frost.
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