<ul><li><keyword id="1322080" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="akatsuki" source="Orion">Akatsuki</keyword> has announced a $20 million fund focused on investing in web3 projects.</li><li>The fund is called ‘<keyword id="14096465" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="emoote" source="Orion">Emoote</keyword>’ based on the underlying belief that <keyword id="4668945" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="nft" source="Orion">NFT</keyword> consumption is based on ‘emotional values’.</li><li>According to the Japanese firm, understanding ‘emotional values’ is key to creating sustainable tokenomics. <br /></li></ul><br />Japanese entertainment and gaming company, Akatsuki, has <a href="https://aktsk.jp/en/press/53234/">announced</a> a new $20 million fund that will squarely focus on investing in web3 projects.<br /><br /><br />The fund has been dubbed Emoote based on the philosophy that NFT consumption is based on ‘emotional values’. Its focus will be to invest in web3 startups that are working on blockchain gaming (<keyword id="12510643" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="gamefi" source="Orion">GameFi</keyword>), non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and the <keyword id="11121339" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="metaverse" source="Orion">Metaverse</keyword>.<br /><br /><br />Till date, <keyword id="14096468" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="emote" source="Orion">Emote</keyword> has used tokens to invest in more than 20 web3 projects globally, including <keyword id="14096467" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="stepn" source="Orion">STEPN</keyword> — a web3 lifestyle app that claims to lie within the intersection of Social-Fi and Game-Fi with the tagline of ‘move-to-earn’.<br /><br /><br /><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/a6fXawXNp6k4jEHK1bGosDp_IkHNITb-ozYRVvdkIDcpj4AHLkHZMu_-LuRaH-B5ID-9onZ8HsjzS2UMzLDwM5XdsmVIFzjFmHN9m8HyO8ZAsMou0NvC9RIRUUoj0CjdR0tnnwqnPp65deFsEQ" /><br /><br />Source: Ataksuki<br /><cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="NFT consumption based on emotional values" comment="subhead" text="NFT consumption based on emotional values"><span data-til="noop">NFT consumption based on emotional values</span></cmsannotation><br />According to Ataksuki, NFT consumption is based on values such as ‘likes’ and ‘empathy’. The company believes that these ‘emotional values’ are an integral part of how a web3 platform configures its tokenomics.<br /><br /><br />An understanding of how these ‘emotional values’ impact tokenomics can pave the way for sustainability and the growth of creators.<br /><cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Asia focus" comment="subhead" text="Asia focus"><span data-til="noop"><keyword id="21718" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="asia" source="Orion">Asia</keyword> focus</span></cmsannotation><br />While Ataksuki is focused on funding GameFi, NFT and metaverse projects, it has a special interest in platforms emerging from Asia following the success of Vietnam-based Axie Infinity and Yield Guild Games from the Philippines. <br /><br /><div type="ExtQuote" text="In response to the success stories, a further increase in web3 projects is expected, with Asia being the focal area." auname="Excerpt from Akatsuki press release"></div><br />They will help web3 startups navigate the marketing and business development landscape in Japanese and Asian markets as well as introduce new Japanese entertainment IP and creators. <br /><br />

NFT consumption is based on ‘emotional values’, says Akatsuki as it launched a new $20 million web3 fund

<ul class="summary-list"><li>For years, scientists have observed flashes of light on Venus and thought they were lightning.</li><li>But a new study suggests they might actually be meteors burning up in Venus' atmosphere.</li></ul><p>Scientists have observed light shows on Venus for many years and during that time, the most accepted explanation was lightning. Venus might even have more lightning than Earth, NASA said in a <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/venus-20071128.html">statement</a> from 2007.</p><p>But a new study is forcing scientists to rethink those preconceived notions, suggesting that Venus' mysterious flashing lights are actually meteors burning up in the planet's atmosphere.</p><p>The study, <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2023JE007914" target="_blank" rel="noopener">published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets</a>, notes that lightning on Venus is "either ubiquitous, rare, or non-existent, depending on how one interprets diverse observations."</p><p>One reason the researchers don't think it's lightning is because of Venus' radio silence. </p><p>On Earth, one way the <a href="https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/lightning/detection/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Severe Storms Laboratory</a> monitors storms is by detecting radio waves from lightning. But, in the past, the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-cassini-pictures-free-ebook-pdf-2017-9">Cassini Probe</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-parker-solar-probe-winds-flip-suns-magnetic-field-2019-12">Parker Solar Probe</a> investigated the "lightning" on Venus while flying by the planet, and neither detected radio signals. </p><p>Figuring out the flashes are probably meteors, however, took additional research. </p><p>Scientists at Arizona State University counted the number of flashes observed at both the Steward Observatory and Japan's Akatsuki orbiter. They estimated between 10,000 and 100,000 flashes per year, which aligned with potential meteor strikes — enough to lead the researchers to conclude that meteors may be the culprit, according to <a href="https://phys.org/news/2023-09-venusian-atmosphere-meteors-lightning.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Phys.org</a>.</p><p>Venus also has <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/venus-gravity-wave-akatsuki-2017-1">sulfuric acid clouds</a> instead of water vapor, which may not even be capable of producing lightning. These factors could indicate that the frequent flashes aren't lightning at all.</p><p>That's good news for future missions to Venus; if the flashes were lightning, it could pose a threat to probes entering the planet's atmosphere, according to NASA.</p><p>"Lightning is likely too rare to pose a hazard to missions that pass through or dwell in the clouds of Venus," the study said. "Likewise, small meteoroids burn up at altitudes of ∼100 km, roughly twice as high above the surface as the clouds, and also would not pose a hazard."</p><p>Researchers believe that probes that descend quickly through Venus' atmosphere are likely safe, <a href="https://www.space.com/venus-lightning-meteor-strikes-atmosphere" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">Space.com reported</a>.</p><p>A spacecraft <a href="https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/venus/exploration/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hasn't landed</a> on Venus since the 1980s. Extreme heat and crushing pressure make it <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-venus-surface-is-like-2017-1" rel="">very inhospitable</a>. The Soviet Union's Venera 13 probe set the record for surviving two hours on the planet in 1981. </p><p>NASA plans to send the <a href="https://ssed.gsfc.nasa.gov/davinci/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DAVINCI</a> probe to study Venus' clouds and geology in 2031 and hopefully retrieve other data when its atmospheric descent probe makes contact with the surface.</p>

Mysterious flashes of light on Venus aren't what scientists thought, according to a new study. And it could mean safer missions to the planet in the future.

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58472777e02ba75e658b6ba5-2400" alt="venus nasa" data-mce-source="NASA" data-link="http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/2015/12/01/10-things-december-7" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/2015/12/01/10-things-december-7">NASA</a></span></p><p class="caption">Venus in visible light.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Venus is hiding something very, very big.</p><p>Every so often, a wave of hot air rises up 40 miles (65 kilometers) from the planet's <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-venus-surface-is-like-2017-1/">Hell-like surface</a> and stretches across its entire diameter. The stationary gravity wave, as its called, hovers above the surface in the shape of a flattened "V", rippling through the sulfuric acid clouds of Venus that blow by at a chaotic and constant 220 mph.</p><p>The anomaly lasts for one or two or maybe three Earth days, then mysteriously vanishes.</p><p>It's invisible to human eyes, but if we had <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/night-sky-radio-infrared-2016-10/">superhuman vision</a> to see it, it might look like a series of ripples in clouds on Earth that stretches all the way from the Arctic to the Antarctic.</p><p>Luckily, the instruments of Japan's Venus-orbiting Akatsuki (or Planet-C) spacecraft saw and photographed the anomaly for the first time in infrared light, a form of "heat vision" humans are incapable of:</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/587d8e51ee14b68f7b8b5633-992" alt="venus gravity wave brightness 1 labeled nature" data-mce-source="Nature; JAXA; Akatsuki/Planet-C" data-link="http://global.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/planet_c/" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://global.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/planet_c/">Nature; JAXA; Akatsuki/Planet-C</a></span></p><p class="caption">An infrared view of Venusian clouds shows a stationary wave.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>A group of Japan-based researchers detailed the oddities of Venus' giant, stationary gravity wave in <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/NGEO2873">a new study</a> published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience. Their work implies that it's far bigger than similar waves seen on Earth and Mars, making it "perhaps the greatest ever observed in the solar system."</p><p>Yet even after discovering the wave in 2015, scrutinizing photographic evidence of it, and modeling its formation with computer simulations, researchers still don't quite understand what they're looking at.</p><p>"It's very bizarre. It has no evident explanations," <a href="http://www.lesia.obspm.fr/perso/thomas-widemann/">Thomas Widemann</a>, a planetary scientist at the Paris Observatory who wasn't involved with the new study, told Business Insider. "It's a surprise for all of us."</p><h2>How gravity waves are born</h2><p>Gravity waves are well-known to meteorologists and atmospheric scientists, who see them as ripples through clouds of water vapor and ice.</p><p>In simplest terms, gravity waves happen as warm, expanding air rises and then suddenly cools, becomes more dense, and falls back down due to gravity.</p><p>Such waves look like this on Earth:</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/587dfb11ee14b62b008b8656-990/earth-gravity-waves-clouds-nasa-earth-observatory-pia04349lrg.jpg" alt="earth gravity waves clouds nasa earth observatory PIA04349_lrg" data-mce-source="NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL; MISR Team" data-mce-caption="Gravity waves in the clouds of Earth." data-link="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=4117" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=4117">NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL; MISR Team</a></span></p><p class="caption">Gravity waves in the clouds of Earth.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>As <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> writer Sarah Kramer <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/whats-difference-gravitational-vs-gravity-waves-2016-2">once explained in a description of the origin of such waves:</a></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">"The layers that make up the atmosphere change temperature and pressure as you rise or fall. When one of the layers hits something (say, a mountain), they push up against it - but gravity pulls them back down. The effect ripples through the other layers, creating waves all the way down.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">[...]</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">"Disturbances in the air, like sudden updrafts or severe thunderstorms, can also make gravity waves. In turn, these can intensify the storms, or even make tornadoes."</p><p>On Earth, which has a comfortably dense atmosphere, gravity waves are pretty small. And while Venus is a rocky planet that shares many similarities with our own - it has a persistent atmosphere, clouds, and roughly 82% the mass and 90% the surface gravity of Earth - the two worlds also couldn't be more different.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/584730dbe02ba75e658b6bd4-1200" alt="venera 13 venus surface don p mitchell" data-mce-source="Soviet Space Agency; IPF APOD; Don P. Mitchell" data-mce-caption="A perspective-normalized, colorized photo of the surface of Venus from the USSR's Venera 13 spacecraft on March 1, 1982." data-link="http://www.apod.lunexit.it/?archive=140" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.apod.lunexit.it/?archive=140">Soviet Space Agency; IPF APOD; Don P. Mitchell</a></span></p><p class="caption">A perspective-normalized, colorized photo of the surface of Venus from the USSR's Venera 13 spacecraft on March 1, 1982.</p></div><p></p></div></div>To put it nicely, Venus today is just about <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-venus-surface-is-like-2017-1/">the worst place imaginable to visit in the solar system</a>, and simultaneously an important analog to better understand our own planet, since it's the result of an "extreme" scenario of runaway global warming.</p><p>On the surface, the air is nearly 97% carbon dioxide, about 100 times thicker than Earth's atmosphere, and a blistering 864 degrees Fahrenheit (462 degrees Celsius), which is hot enough to melt lead (and why <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/venus-deadly-surface-conditions-2016-12">no spacecraft has ever survived</a> more than a few hours there).</p><p>"It's a supercritical fluid mixture, not just a gas," Gustavo Costa, a chemist and materials scientist at NASA Glenn Research Center, recently told Business Insider.</p><p>Supercritical fluids behave like a gas and a liquid <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gCTKteN5Y4">at the same time</a>. If you drink <a href="http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/consumer/faq/decaffeinating-coffee.shtml">decaffeinated coffee</a>, you benefit from them: supercritical carbon dioxide is typically washed over coffee beans to penetrate deep inside them and dissolve away most of their caffeine.</p><p>Which makes the enormous gravity wave on Venus all the more unusual.</p><p>One thing scientists are certain of, however, is that it starts above a mountain highland about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) tall.</p><h2>A stubby, windy mountain on Venus</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/587d90c8ee14b6a47b8b561e-" alt="venus gravity wave brightness nature" width="800" height="399" data-mce-source="Nature; JAXA; Akatsuki/Planet-C" data-mce-caption="A statioanary wave in the cloud tops of Venus." data-link="http://global.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/planet_c/" /></div></div></p><p>Above is an animation of the Venus gravity wave (bow shape, dark and light orange) over a mountainous highland (white contours) located at the planet's equator.</p><p>"The fact that it's tied to the surface some 60 kilometers [37 miles] below, that's the shocking part," <a href="http://experts.news.wisc.edu/experts/865">Sanjay S. Limaye</a>, a planetary scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who wasn't part of the new study, told Business Insider.</p><p>Limaye explained that air on Venus is essentially separated into three main layers: its supercritical-fluid surface, a tumultuous yet powerful middle layer, and the high-altitude cloud tops of sulfuric acid that constantly blow westward.</p><p>That fast-moving upper layer of clouds, which lap the planet's slow rotation roughly every 4 days - a feature called the "superrotation" of Venus - is where the gravity wave appears, some 65 kilometers (40 miles) high.</p><p>"What is amazing about this is, if you look at the atmosphere 50 to 55 kilometers [31 to 34 miles] up, it's pretty chaotic," Limaye said. "How does [a gravity wave] survive that? It should get neutralized there."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57a88debce38f27d328b5215-2400" alt="venus mountain" data-mce-source="NASA/JPL" data-link="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00106" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00106">NASA/JPL</a></span></p><p class="caption">A radar image of a Venusian mountain.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Winds may blow over the stubby mountain range at speeds comparable to a gentle breeze, but because the air is a supercritical fluid there, and roughly 100 times denser than the air we breathe, it carries a lot more force - more like a wave in an ocean than a gust of air.</p><p>This may help the warm surface air of Venus rise all the way to the cloud tops, and a standalone computer model made by the researchers in Japan could replicate the feature.</p><p><a href="https://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff/wrossow.html">William Rossow</a>, an atmospheric scientist at the City College of New York and NASA, told Business Insider in an email that this seems plausible, but wasn't totally convinced the gravity wave goes all the way up to the sulfuric acid cloud tops of Venus.</p><p>"[T]he actual disturbance could be much lower in the atmosphere and therefore easier to imagine that topography is causing it," Rossow said.</p><p>Still, the Japanese research team spent more than a year analyzing the data, and most scientists Business Insider spoke to say the gravity does appear to reach that high - and that current models of the climate on Venus can't account for the anomaly.</p><p>"It's very hard to explain this," Widemann said. "It will probably drive the entire [science] community to revisit our views of the planet's atmosphere."</p><p>Unfortunately, Akatsuki is the only spacecraft currently studying Venus, and NASA just funded <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-new-asteroid-missions-2017-1">two missions to asteroids</a> over a new Venus orbiter and lander (plus <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/neocam-mission-not-fully-funded-nasa-2017-1">a telescope to hunt near-Earth asteroids</a>).</p><p>"I think this [gravity wave] announcement came maybe 10 days too late," Widemann said. "It's a demonstration that there's something very interesting going on on Venus [...] yet we can't even study our closest neighbor."</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/molten-salt-reactor-technology-power-world-millions-years-2016-12">This Cold War-era technology could safely power the world for millions of years</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="hoOXhiODE6mtYAnzOSgYhFwj_jwPpGtb" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'hoOXhiODE6mtYAnzOSgYhFwj_jwPpGtb',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

Venus is hiding a 'bizarre' gravity wave in its clouds that spans the entire planet

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/584822dcba6eb66d268b7ab0-2400" alt="venus surface volcano sulfur lava esa" data-mce-source="ESA/AOES Medialab" data-mce-caption="An illustration of the surface of Venus, which may have active volcanoes." data-link="http://sci.esa.int/venus-express/51186-is-venus-volcanically-active/" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://sci.esa.int/venus-express/51186-is-venus-volcanically-active/">ESA/AOES Medialab</a></span></p><p class="caption">An illustration of the surface of Venus.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>A tiny version of Hell on Earth is hiding in Cleveland, Ohio.</p><p>Called the Glenn Extreme Environments Rig (GEER), the 14-ton steel chamber can faithfully recreate the toxic, choking, and scorching-hot conditions on the surface of Venus - a once-habitable twin of Earth gone very, very wrong.</p><p>Scientists at the NASA Glenn Research Center, where GEER is located, have been developing the project for the <a href="https://www.wired.com/2012/01/nasa-venus-chamber/">past 5 years</a> and fired it up for <a href="https://geer.grc.nasa.gov/geer-overview/operational-history/">the first time</a> in 2014. Since then, researchers have lengthened their test runs and exposed all kinds of metals, ceramics, wires, mesh, plating, and electronics to conditions on "Venus" to see what lasts - and what bites the dust.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58472a0fe02ba738018b7c64-2400" alt="glenn extreme environments rig geer venus hell chamber nasa" data-mce-source="GEER/NASA Glenn Research Center" data-link="https://geer.grc.nasa.gov/" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://geer.grc.nasa.gov/">GEER/NASA Glenn Research Center</a></span></p><p class="caption">NASA's GEER chamber in Cleveland, Ohio.</p></div><p></p></div></div>"In March 2015, we spent roughly 100 days at the surface of Venus, and the longest single stretch was 42 days," Lori Arnett, NASA's facility manager for GEER, told Business Insider.</p><p>Their hope? Learn how to build spacecraft that can last months or even years on Venus instead of being destroyed almost instantly.</p><p>"One of the last probes to visit Venus was Venera 13 in [1982], and it only survived for about 2 hours and 7 minutes," said Gustavo Costa, a chemist and materials scientist who's working with GEER. "Venus is very, very corrosive."</p><p>Until a modern spacecraft drops through the planet's thick atmosphere again and explores the surface, GEER is the best way to ask what it's actually like there.</p><p>"It's like Hell on Earth," Costa said. "It's very harsh."</p><h2>Venus is Earth's deadly twin</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58472777e02ba75e658b6ba5-2400" alt="venus nasa" data-mce-source="NASA" data-link="http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/2015/12/01/10-things-december-7" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/2015/12/01/10-things-december-7">NASA</a></span></p><p class="caption">Venus in true color.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The second planet from the sun was, and still is, very similar to Earth.</p><p><a href="http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/venus">Venus</a> is rocky and has roughly 82% the mass and <a href="http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/venusfact.html">90% the surface gravity</a> of Earth. It also has a persistent atmosphere and orbits in the sun's "<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/goldilocks-exoplanet-habitability-internal-heat-2016-8">habitable zone</a>" (where water can exist as a liquid). Some researchers think the planet once had warm, shallow oceans that were <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-climate-modeling-suggests-venus-may-have-been-habitable">cozy to life for about 2 billion years</a>. That could be about 1.2 billion years long enough for life to emerge and thrive, if you're using <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oldest-fossils-greenland-stromatolites-2016-8">Earth as a scorecard</a>.</p><p>And yet its water vanished, carbon dioxide began clogging up the atmosphere, and - due to runaway global warming - the world was cooked to a crisp.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58472a0ee02ba75e658b6bb9-2400" alt="glenn extreme environments rig geer venus hell chamber inside nasa" data-mce-source="GEER/NASA Glenn Research Center" data-link="https://geer.grc.nasa.gov/" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://geer.grc.nasa.gov/">GEER/NASA Glenn Research Center</a></span></p><p class="caption">The GEER chamber opened up.</p></div><p></p></div></div>In short, Venus today is just about the worst place imaginable to visit in the solar system, and simultaneously an important analog to better understand our own planet.</p><p>We know this thanks to nearly two dozen successful missions there, including eight orbiters and 10 landers, most of them launched by the Soviet Union.</p><p>Data beamed back by these spacecraft show Venusian surface air is nearly 97% carbon dioxide, about 100 times thicker than Earth's atmosphere, and is a blistering 864 degrees Fahrenheit (462 degrees Celsius). That's twice the temperature needed to ignite wood and hot enough to melt lead.</p><p>But what it's actually like to be on the surface, and what happens to materials and spacecraft that dare land there, hasn't been clear until GEER came along.</p><h2>What the surface of Venus is like</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/584730dbe02ba75e658b6bd4-1200" alt="venera 13 venus surface don p mitchell" data-mce-source="Soviet Space Agency; IPF APOD; Don P. Mitchell" data-mce-caption="A perspective-normalized, colorized photo of the surface of Venus from the USSR's Venera 13 spacecraft on March 1, 1982." data-link="http://www.apod.lunexit.it/?archive=140" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.apod.lunexit.it/?archive=140">Soviet Space Agency; IPF APOD; Don P. Mitchell</a></span></p><p class="caption">A colorized photo of the surface of Venus from the Venera 13 spacecraft on March 1, 1982.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>GEER pulls together everything researchers have learned to date about surface conditions on Venus into an 800-liter chamber. A mixing machine combines the known gases on Venus and a powerful heater warms them up.</p><p>"It takes two-and-a-half days to warm up and five days to cool down," Leah Nakley, GEER's lead engineer, told Business Insider.</p><p>Costa says one thing he's come to understand by working with GEER is just how strange the atmosphere of Venus is at the planet's surface.</p><p>"It's a supercritical fluid mixture, not just a gas," Costa said.</p><p>Supercritical fluids <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gCTKteN5Y4">behave like a gas and a liquid</a> at the same time. If you drink <a href="http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/consumer/faq/decaffeinating-coffee.shtml">decaffeinated coffee</a>, you benefit from them: supercritical carbon dioxide is typically washed over coffee beans to penetrate deep inside them and dissolve away most of their caffeine.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/58473e6ee02ba78f1c8b7942-1878" alt="metal wire geer venus exposure black crystals nasa business insider labeled" data-mce-source="GEER/NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center; Business Insider" data-mce-caption="A metal wired exposed to Venus-like conditions inside of NASA's GEER chamber." data-link="https://geer.grc.nasa.gov/" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://geer.grc.nasa.gov/">GEER/NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center; Business Insider</a></span></p><p class="caption">A metal wired exposed to Venus-like conditions inside of NASA's GEER chamber.</p></div><p></p></div></div>This same thing can happen with metals and electronics, though, which is not a good thing for spacecraft.</p><p>Normally, rust-proof steel alloys will leach out certain metals to form fans of black minerals, like some Gothic version of a crystal-growing kit.</p><p>Costa says walking around the surface of Venus would feel like walking through air that's as thick as a pool of water, at a pressure equivalent to being 100 meters (328 feet) underwater, and deadly hot.</p><p>A "breeze" of a few miles per hour would feel more like a gentle wave pushing you around at shore.</p><p>"It's difficult to imagine this. I guess it'd be like sticking yourself inside a pressure cooker," he said.</p><p>But the atmosphere of Venus also has trace amounts hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen sulfide, and sulfuric acid, which are all extremely dangerous chemicals.</p><p>"Instead of having water vapor clouds, Venus has sulfuric acid clouds," he said. "And you have to go through those to even get to the surface. That is terrifying."</p><h2>The next mission to Venus</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5848250fba6eb620008b7e34-1200" alt="davinci venus mission descent stages" data-mce-source="DAVINCI/NASA" data-mce-caption="The planned stages of DAVINCI's descent to the surface of Venus." data-link="http://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/690/photos.html" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/690/photos.html">DAVINCI/NASA</a></span></p><p class="caption">The planned stages of DAVINCI's descent to the surface of Venus.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Japan is currently the only nation with a spacecraft around Venus, called Akatsuki, though <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/japanese-akatsuki-spacecraft-2015-12">it arrived 5 years late</a> and is an orbiter, not a lander.</p><p>The US, meanwhile, hasn't launched a mission dedicated to Venus since 1989 (the Magellan orbiter) and hasn't landed anything on the world in more than 45 years.</p><p>However, NASA is currently mulling the launch of a proposed <a href="http://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/solarsystem/projectsalpha">Venus probe called DAVINCI</a>.</p><p>If NASA chooses to fully fund that mission in as part of its Discovery program - GEER is currently being upgraded in part to support researching materials for the descent probe - it would arrive sometime in 2023, parachute down through the atmosphere for 63 minutes, sample gases along the way, and take the highest-resolution images yet of the surface.</p><p>In the past, NASA researchers have also envisioned dropping <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jfH7kK61OU">shiny, nuclear-powered rovers on Venus</a>. Such a mission might still be possible if the agency can design more efficient nuclear batteries - and overcome its <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-making-plutonium-space-travel-2016-2">ongoing shortage of plutonium-238</a>, a rare radioactive material that's required to fuel such power sources.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-aim-antarctica-sky-lights-up-electric-blue-clouds-2016-12">Antarctica's sky just lit up with electric-blue clouds - here's why</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="9jaWUwODE6g4vTO4-lnwtaXRByt4D1Gm" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', '9jaWUwODE6g4vTO4-lnwtaXRByt4D1Gm',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

You Searched For "akatsuki" and got 4 results

NFT consumption is based on ‘emotional values’, says Akatsuki as it launched a new $20 million web3 fund

BI India Bureau

Mysterious flashes of light on Venus aren't what scientists thought, according to a new study. And it could mean safer missions to the planet in the future.

Sonam Sheth

Venus is hiding a 'bizarre' gravity wave in its clouds that spans the entire planet

Dave Mosher

Here's why you would never, ever want to walk on the surface of Venus

Dave Mosher