Word: venusized
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...Moscow, scientists lost little time in revealing the details of what Venus 4 had found. Although the temperature at 15.5 miles was an uncomfortable but bearable 104° F., they reported, it gradually increased as the capsule drifted lower, reaching a scorching 536° F. by the time that transmissions ceased some 90 minutes later...
After lonely, four-month journeys through the void, two ingeniously contrived spacecraft-one Russian, the other American-reached Venus last week. Methodically investigating the cloud-shrouded planet, they successfully radioed their findings back across 50 million miles of space to scientists on earth. The dual performance was perhaps the most impressive demonstration yet of the technical progress made by man during his first decade of space flight...
Diving directly into the planet's dense, murky atmosphere, Russia's 2,427-lb. Venus 4 ejected an egg-shaped, instrument-crammed capsule. Although the mother ship was quickly incinerated by the frictional heat of its plunge, the capsule was insulated by an ablative coating that gradually burned off as it heated. At an altitude of 15.5 miles, when its velocity had been sufficiently slowed by Venusian "air" resistance, the capsule automatically deployed a parachute and began drifting slowly toward the surface. As it descended through the whirling gases, the capsule sniffed them, noted their composition, temperature...
...determined that the atmosphere consists almost entirely of carbon dioxide, which, scientists believe, is spewed out by volcanic activity. No trace of nitrogen (which constitutes 78% of the earth's atmosphere) and only 1.5% of oxygen and water vapor were detected. In readings made before Venus 4 entered the atmosphere, the Russians could find no evidence of a Venusian magnetic field and radiation belt...
...critics who point out that it would be difficult for life to arise spontaneously in the atmosphere, Morowitz and Sagan have a ready answer: it did not. Instead, they postulate, ancient Venus had a much thinner atmosphere; its surface, now superheated by the greenhouse effect of a thick carbon-dioxide-filled atmosphere, was once cool enough to spawn life. As more gas was spewed into the atmosphere by volcanic action, however, the surface temperatures gradually became unbearable and could have driven the more buoyant organisms into the clouds, where they evolved and may well exist today...