For most of human history, scientists and theologians alike believed in the geocentric theory of the universe, which basically boils down to the belief that Earth is at the center of the universe, and everything revolves around it, including the sun.
Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, but despite that, it has some ice on the surface. The ice is found in craters that are never exposed to sunlight, but don’t mistake that for a sign that human beings could live there.
In 2006, the International Astronomical Union decided that one of them, Pluto, did not meet the criteria for being a full-fledged planet, because it had not yet “cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.”
According to NASA, some of the winds can blow at speeds of over 1,100 miles per hour, and to put that in perspective, the speed of sound back here on Earth is just 767 miles per hour.
Known to the cognoscenti as “Planet X,” it’s believed to orbit the sun even farther out than Pluto does, and may take between 10,000 and 20,000 of our years to go around the sun just once.
Some of the dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt follow orbits that cluster together, and the gravity from a potential planet may be what causes them to do this. Or maybe not.
Let’s say you weigh 150 pounds on Earth. Then let’s say you went to the moon. You would find yourself weighing a considerably lighter 25 pounds.
Venus, meanwhile, has an atmosphere that’s 100 times thicker than the one we have on Earth, and it’s composed almost entirely of carbon dioxide, so it reaches an average temperature of 875 degrees Fahrenheit, while the temperature on Mercury tops out at 800 degrees Fahrenheit.
Venus isn’t only the hottest planet in the solar system. It’s also the planet that boasts the largest number of volcanoes. The number of volcanoes on Venus exceeds 1,600.
Venus may be the hottest planet in the solar system, and it may be the planet with the most volcanoes, but for reasons that scientists have been unable to determine, it has no moons.