NASA Just Found Declassified Photos of Venus by the Soviet Union

each and every expert in the field of Intergalactic investigations poke around on other planets eager to find out more and more about our great and expansive Universe most days they find very little after all outer space is large and it's a lot of hard work but now and again they do find structures that blow everyone's Minds these are 20 mysterious structures found on other planets [Music] number 20 Olympus Mons Olympus Mons is the largest volcano and apparently also the tallest planetary mountain in our solar system that we know about anyways it Towers over Mars at

a height of about 13.6 Mi which makes it nearly three times taller than Earth's Mount Everest so that's quite the sizable pile of rock by most measures it features a diameter of 300 73 Mi and a summit Cera that spans roughly 50 Mi it is really very big indeed this volcano was seemingly formed by the flow of Highly fluid basaltic lava and it features gentle slopes that average around 5° this slight incline is why it has such a massive breath scientists believe that the volcano began forming billions of years ago but some lava flows indicate

relatively recent activity well recently in Planet terms they mean that it was the last active potentially with within the last few million years this huge mountain can be found in the tharsus region on Mars Olympus Mons is part of a huge volcanic province that has shaped the planet's geology and climate over time Mars's lower gravity which is about 38% that of Earth's has allowed Olympus Mons to grow much taller than any other Mountain on our planet and the thin atmosphere on Mars is also a factor in the creation of the lava flows which have helped

to build the volcano's chunky size now it's time for the sweet topic NASA just found declassified photos of Venus found by the Soviet Union or at least that's what some people say conspiracy theorists online have found this image and they're insistent that it comes from the Soviet Union space program and had previously been top secret that is until now because the person who posted it claimed that's what it was but then mysteriously vanished from the internet never to be seen to comment again this led people to believe that what he said must be true and

the Soviets must must have dealt with him if the theories are true and it is real it's gamechanging because it goes to show three very peculiar structures which as mentioned are apparently on Venus but what do you think these things are go on and let me know in the comments section down below using the # sweet topic and tell me what you think about what you just saw on the screen number 19 the face on Mars over 40 years ago the first images from the surface of Mars were sent back to Earth these would be

captured by Viking 1 the very first spacecraft that we know of anyways and that was successful in its journey to landing on the red planet when those images would first be examined one of them stood out from the others and it seemed to show the face of a human in the dust of the planet's surface the Tabloid newspapers naturally took it a step further announcing such nonsense as monkey face on Mars because of course they did but despite all the silliness people couldn't help but be transfixed by the sight of these strange but familiar shapes

this image alone probably drummed up a huge amount of public interest in the idea of Life on Mars it was the days before the internet beamed these things into our homes all the live long day so it was much more exciting than it sounds in fact some people took that shape in the Rocks quite literally and figured that this was what scientists were actually up there looking for really the Life on Mars that they were interested in was in the tiniest and simplest of forms you know on a microbial level rather than the sort of

life forms that might be apt to carve big old faces into the Rocks well there you have it anyways this classic image has sparked more than a few imaginations in the decades since it was first captured and it's easy to see why but what do you think is it proof of aliens number 18 Martian pyramids the pyramids of Mars have long interested scientists space enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists alike they're located in the Sedonia region of Mars and gained worldwide wi attention when the Viking one Orbiter captured images of the area in 1976 it's amongst the

various landforms there that a so-called face on Mars is found there to this face is a series of pyramid-like structures that have helped to add to the conspiracy theories about aliens the earliest interpretations suggest that these formations could be the remains of an ancient Martian civilization because you know we have a bunch of pyramids and Monumental architecture on Earth and our imaginations for other civilizations can only stretch to stuff that looks like our own but of course later missions changed that idea fairly rapidly high resolution imaging by the Mars Global surveyor and the Mars reconnaissance

Orbiter had provided much more clear pictures of the region and these images reveal that the face on Mars and the pyramids were disappointingly for the alien crowd natural geological formations ones that had been shaped by wind and erosion over millions of years the apparent face is the result of light and shadow effects a phenomenon known where the human brain perceives familiar patterns in random shapes because you know we can only see what we already kind of recognize despite all the valid scientific explanations the pyramids of Mars continue to fuel popular culture and science fiction they've

been featured in various books movies and television shows which includes an episode of the British TV series Doctor Who number 17 bizarre spikes on Mars uh-oh here are more strange rock formations so brace yourselves it seems that we're developing a bit of a trend in our search for aliens on Mars the various Rovers that are sent out there to trundle about analyzing shiz and sending images back to Earth for the NASA scientists to pour over keep finding weird rocks I know it's kind of crazy on a planet that seems to be made of rocks and

dust but it does just keep happening how strange the Curiosity Rover was sent by NASA to explore a crater on Mars and it found a bu of weird rocks a kind of surreal twisting Spike structure that pokes out of the surface of the planet NASA said that they believe that these rocks were likely the result of the natural cementing of ancient fractures in the sedimentary rocks on Mars as the softer parts of the rock have worn away over time the remaining parts are left in this gnarly Twisted spiky formation who would have th it number

16 valis marinaras valis marinaras is one of the biggest and most obvious features on Mars stretching across the planet's equatorial region this vast canyon system is often compared to the Grand Canyon but it's so big that it dwarfs any terrestrial counterpart the thing is around 2500 mi in length and up to about 125 m in width with depths of up to 4.3 Mi it's no pothole that's for sure they named this geological feature after NASA's Mariner 9 spacecraft which was the first to have captured detailed imagery of the Canyon Way Back in the early 1970s

the canyon system is thought to have formed through tectonic processes where the planet's crust was stretched and cracked creating deep Rifts and faults over time these were widened and deepened by erosion landslides and the possible flow of water on other fluids some sections of the canyon seem to show layers of sedimentary rock which hints at the presence of ancient lakes or rivers and some people are pretty excited as this suggests there is a history of water on Mars and therefore the planet may have had po potential to have supported life you know like aliens always

with the aliens number 15 hexagon at Saturn's North Pole Saturn's hexagon is a rather mysterious feature in the solar system this geometric Cloud pattern located at the planet's North Pole was first discovered by the Voyager spacecraft back in the early 1980s and then it was later studied in Greater detail by a mission which orbited Saturn between 2004 and 2017 the hexagon is a massive and seemingly constant atmospheric phenomenon that measures about 1,800 m in diameter this is larger than the diameter of Earth stuff in space is on an entirely different scale than what we're used

to Now isn't it the hexagon itself appears to consist of a six-sided jet stream with each side stretching roughly 8600 Mi unlike most other weather patterns in the solar system which are generally boring circular or oval the hexagon's geometric shape is unique and has puzzled scientists for many decades Ates it's probably aliens and I know that's what you were thinking as well naturally the exact cause of the hexagon Remains the topic of considerable debate there's a leading theory which would suggest that the shape results from a standing wave pattern in Saturn's atmosphere similar phenomenon have

been recreated in laboratory experiments where rotating fluids exhibit polygonal shapes under certain conditions it's all very clever and it's also a bit confusing somewhat excitingly the hexagon also has a rotating storm at its center that is surrounded by the high-speed winds that Define its edges these winds are really powerful and seem to reach speeds of about 200 mph over the years the hexagon has remained weirdly stable maintaining its shape even as Saturn goes through seasonal changes number 14 Enceladus tiger stripes Enceladus is one of Saturn's moons scientists have been staring at images of this distant

Rock and have become transfixed with the so-called tiger stripes that they say they can see these are four prominent parallel fissures near the Moon South Pole and these features are apparently of immense scientific interest due to their role in the geologic and potentially habitable environment these Stripes were first discovered by NASA's Cassini spacecraft they're about 81 m long spaced out roughly 22 M apart and it's believed that these stripes are the source of cryo volcanic activity where Jets of water vapor ice particles and organic compounds are ejected up into space the geysers erupting from the

tiger stripes have been studied extensively by Cassini and they have figured out that these Jets contribute to Saturn's e-ring which is a diffus ring of microscopic ice particles surrounding the planet interestingly the composition of the material would suggest the presence of a kind of subsurface ocean beneath its icy crust and where there is water there could be life or microbes at least the surface around the tiger stripes is relatively young showing signs of ongoing resurfacing due to the continuous eruptions temperatures near the fissures are also warmer than the surrounding areas with some regions being at

least 200° C more warm than the rest of the moon's icy surface number 13 lapus Ridge lapus is another one of Saturn's moons and home to a weird thing that's known as the Lapidus Ridge this is an enormous mountain range that runs along the moon's equator giving Lapidus the look of a walnut it's stylish even if a little nutty this is another thing that was discovered by the Cassini spacecraft during its Mission around Saturn the Lapidus Ridge has Peaks that rise up to 12 Mi High making them some of the tallest mountains in the solar

system The Ridges peculiar Symmetry and location have had scientists scratching their heads in puzzlement ever since these things were first discovered one hypothesis would suggest that the ridge may have formed early in the moon's history when Lapidus was spinning much faster than it is today the rapid rotation could have caused the moon's equator to bulge forward and create the ridge as the moon cooled and solidified another theory posits that the ridge could be the remnants of a collapsed ring system one that had once orbited Lapidus and eventually settled onto the surface it's all very fascinating

I'm sure I expected old elen musk is eying that one up trying to figure out where his mcmansion is going to go number 12 the Great Red Spot Jupiter Jupiter's Great Red Spot is actually a massive storm that has been raging on and on and on for centuries it's the largest storm in the solar system with a diameter of about 10,159 Mi and that makes the whole thing big enough to engulf the entire Earth that kind of puts stuff in perspective then doesn't it the storm was first spotted in the 17th century by astronomers who

were using early telescopes and ever since then the Great Red Spot has been continuously monitored and studied with increasing detail all thanks to advancements in space exploration and Technology NASA's Voyager missions in the late 1970s and more recent observations by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Juno spacecraft have sent back loads more data on this peculiar atmospheric phenomenon the Great Red Spot is an anticyclone meaning that it rotates anticlockwise in the southern hemisphere these winds are crazily powerful and it spins at speeds of up to 268 mph the storm's longevity and the persistence are generally

attributed to Jupiter's lack of a solid surface and this seems to allow that storm to continue on without the friction that would normally dissipate it on a terrestrial planet like Earth number 11 europa's ice cracks Europa is one of Jupiter's moons and it has ice cracks that crisscross the moon's surface and where there is ice there is water and where there is water there may well be aliens images of europa's cracks were first captured by NASA's Galileo spacecraft back in the 1990s the moon surface is a vast and Frozen expanse but unlike other icy bodies

in the solar system Europa shell has this bizarre network of long and dark lines these cracks can extend for thousands of miles and are believed to be caused by the gravitational forces exerted by Jupiter and its other moons leading to something called tidal flexing this is the continuous stretching and compressing from tidal forces that have caused europa's icy crust to fracture and shift creating the various ridges and cracks that can be seen on its surface these processes allow for the possibility of liquid water or even slushy ice beneath the surface to emerge which then freezes

and forms brand new ice and maybe it even contains aliens the trouble is that Jupiter is just so gosh darned far away it's going to make Jeff Bezos commute to the office so inconvenient number 10 europa's chaos terrain now as we've seen before this is one of Jupiter's moons Europa has a region that's known as the chaos terrain and this area has a kind of chaotic jumble of ice blocks and disrupted surface features which is why it's been given such a cool sounding name this stuff was seen originally by NASA's Galileo spacecraft it consists of

regions where the normally smooth and icy crust appears to be broken into large irregularly shaped blocks some of which have moved and rotated these ice blocks ranging in size from a few miles to about 10 Mi across are embodied in a mess of what appears to be refrozen slushy ice scientists who have been peering at the images of Europa believe that the formation of the chaos terrain is closely linked to the subsurface ocean that is thought to exist beneath europa's icy shell the prevailing Theory would suggest that heat from the moon's interior generated by tidal

forces from Jupiter's gravity causes the ice to melt and become more pliable this process creates pockets of liquid water or slushy ice near the surface which then disrupt the overlying ice crust and as the liquid or slushy ice refreezes it traps the displaced blocks in their new and jumbled position they think that like the other stuff they've observed there this could be a sign that it may potentially be habitable and I can even hear elen musk is powering up his spaceship as we speak number nine landslides on Vesta the asteroid Vesta just happens to be

one of the largest bodies in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and in recent times images of this big old Space Rock have revealed unexpected geological activity being landslides NASA's Dawn spacecraft which orbited Vesta from 2011 to 2012 had captured these detailed images of the asteroid surface Vesta was previously thought to be a pretty inert sort of thing but the discovery of landslides has sent the science people into a heads scratching question Fest about the possibility of the rock having had more complex geological history the landslides on Vesta come in various forms some are

long narrow flows that seem to extend from miles down steep crater walls While others are broad fan-shaped deposits at the base of a slope these features are similar to landslides seen on Earth and other planetary bodies so it's now thought that the processes driving them might be Universal scientists believe that the landslides on Vesta are are mostly being triggered by impacts of other asteroids and these collisions generate seismic activity and Shake Vesta surface causing the loose material to slide down slopes the low gravity of Vesta allows these landslides to travel long distances but who even

knew the Rocks could be so exciting number eight bright spots on Saras so if Vesta is a big rock in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter then Sarah is the biggest these bright spots spots were first seen by NASA's Dawn spacecraft in 2015 and they've sparked some feisty debates about their origin and composition you know how excited these space nerds can get the close-up images of the surface showed that the brightest spots are located in a crater a 57 M wide depression on the asteroid itself the most shiny of these spots is known as

cilia Fula and it shines brilliantly against the darker surrounding terrain making it easily visible even from a distance some of the speculation about the bright spots ranged from Ice to salts to cryo volcanic activity but an analysis by Dawn's instruments eventually determined that these spots were composed mostly of sodium carbonate a type of salt this suggests that the spots are the result of Briny water from the Rocks interior reaching the surface and evaporating leaving behind the reflective salt deposits like when you do a lot of exercise on a hot day and your sweaty shirt dries

with all of those white streaks ew number seven Titan's Lakes Titan is Saturn's largest moon and it has vast lakes and seas that are full not with water but with liquid methane and ethane it sounds kind of lovely doesn't it Titans lakes and seas are mostly located near its poles the biggest is Kraken M spanning over 620 Mi across and that my stat loving friends is larger than the Caspian Sea which is Earth's Own largest inland body of water these bodies of liquid are fed by rainfall from Titan's dense and nitrogen-rich atmosphere which also contains

a significant amount of methane it sounds a bit smelly to be honest but apparently the moon's methane cycle is similar to Earth's water cycle with methane evaporating from the surface forming clouds and precipitating back down as rain this is what then creates rivers and tributaries that carve out Titan's icy landscape eventually draining into lakes and seas it may not be the prime vacation hot spot that elen musk was hoping for after all number six Titan sand dunes as well as all of that methane and big lakes of liquid smells there are also a lot of

sand dunes on Titan it seems from appearances to be quite the holiday destination doesn't it until you realize it's about a billion miles away quite literally actually and that also means that it would take about 7 years just to get there I imagine that elen musk and Jeff Bezos have planned ahead stock up on snacks for the trip but how many of us mere mortals can get 7 years off of work just for the journey these sand dunes stretch for hundreds of miles and share a similar scale to the biggest desert Dunes on Earth in

the Namib Desert but whereas sand on earth is made mostly of silicate here on Titan the sand is made from a lot of dark and carbon Rich organic materials number five phobos's grooves so Phobos is Mars's biggest moon it has two of them and as well as being interesting to the space scientists for all the usual reasons they're also especially interested in the grooves that this moon has got going on these are linear depressions that have been studied since the 1970s and have given us a greater insight into the history of the Moon the thing

is that these grooves are actually kind of weird they have such a regularity and a pattern that it's really difficult for everyone to not immediately begin yelling about aliens as people are want to do so natural there's been a whole lot of debate about these grooves one idea would suggest that the grooves are stress fractures resulting from the tidal forces exerted by Mars gravity as Phobos orbits Mars at a distance of only about 6,000 km the gravitational pole create significant stress on the moon structure potentially causing the surface to crack another theory that reckons that

the grooves are the result of debris ejected from large impact events on Mars and a third possibility is that the grooves formed as a result of impact events on Phobos itself the sticky crater in particular may have played a crucial role the force of the impact that created Stickney could have sent shock waves through Phobos causing the surface to crack and form the grooves but whatever may have caused it there's no doubt that Phobos is one very groovy Moon number four Neptune's dark spots Neptune the distant ice giant of the solar system has rather a

lot of atmospheric Mysteries and right at the top of the weirdness list are their dark spots these are massive stormy features that are like Jupiter's Great Rod spot but different in some unique ways the first of these dark spots was discovered by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft during its fly by in 1989 the Great Dark Spot as it was called measured roughly the size of Earth and dominated much of Neptune's southern hemisphere unlike Jupiter's long lasting storms Neptune's dark spots appear and disappear over relatively short short periods these spots are thought to be high pressure systems

with winds whipping around them at speeds that reach up to 1500 mph which is also terrifyingly fast it's thought that these things form when gases well up from deeper within the planet's atmosphere and rise and condense and that creates thick clouds that block out the sunlight the dark spots are often accompanied by bright and white clouds that are composed of methane ice which form when the gases rise and cool rapidly but really though whatever ever it is that causes this phenomenon it's still just totally awesome that we get to see any of it at all

let alone to try to start to figure out the scientific explanations in them number three volcanism on Venus Venus is often called Earth's twin because of its similar size and proximity except that it's not exactly a welcoming environment for us flimsy bodied humans for starters it's covered in thick and sulfuric clouds and has a landscape that's dotted with volcanoes NASA's mellan spacecraft mapped out Venus using radar in the early '90s and showed a surface that was covered with these volcanic formations unlike Earth where plate tectonics Drive volcanic activity Venus's volcanoes are primarily the result of

the planet's internal heat escaping through its crust just like it keeps on bursting open because the middle is so hot it sounds especially dangerous to be honest and when you discover that this heat is generated by the decay of radioactive elements from within Venus's mantle leading to a widespread volcanic activity then the inhospitable surface of Venus becomes all that very clear indeed it's probably not the best option for elen musk and his mcmansion but then again Perhaps it [Laughter] is number two mysterious maze here we are again on Titan that Moon of Saturn and this

time we're looking at a mysterious Maze of streaks on the surface of this big old rock the streaks on Titan that seem to appear as dark elongated lines stretch out for hundreds of miles across the moon surface and unlike the sand dunes or river channels that are also found on Titan these streaks are kind of narrow and linear and cut across other geological features there is an idea that these streaks are formed by the action of Titan's dense nitrogen Rich atmosphere that combines with the strong and steady winds that are driven by by the moon's

slow rotation and seasonal changes although they may look like things that exist on Earth they do have a different structure and are formed through different processes at the moment they don't really know what these streaks are actually made from and can only speculate with the information that they already have about Titan and its other chemical elements but further research and time will tell eventually number one Sputnik Pena Sputnik penia is really big heart-shaped Basin on Pluto's surface which has been revealed by NASA's New Horizons Mission this icy plane covers about 620 Mi across and is

part of the larger tombal region when New Horizons flew to Pluto in July of 2015 it sent back a whole bunch of images and data that totally changed our understanding of the distant Min Planet spotnik plena appeared as a smooth and bright expanse that contrasted with Pluto's darker and rugged terrain the Basin surface is composed mostly of nitrogen methane and carbon monoxide ises and it reflects the distant sunlight so why is it there does it have any way to support life and are aliens involved we could start to ponder some of these questions together while

we wait for more science to be gathered on the subject well that's all from the distant parts of the solar system let me know what you thought in the comments down below check out the other cool things on the screen and I will see you next time