A small group of scientists have their heads in the hot clouds of the 2nd planet.

Photograph by James LaBounty VENUS ENVY
David Grinspoon, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, beholds a model of the orb on which he yearns to find life.
Photograph by James LaBounty

If our solar system has a Hell, it's Venus. The air is choked with foul and corrosive sulfur, literally brimstone, heaved from ancient volcanoes and feeding battery-acid clouds above. Although the second planet is a step farther from the sun than Mercury, a runaway greenhouse effect makes it hotter–indeed, it's the hottest of the nine planets, a toasty 900

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