Extreme Places in the Solar System
Channel: Astro Biological
Date: 2017-08-29

Welcome back to Bens Lab, as we head in a new direction for the channel!

G'day, lunatics!

Do you love risking life and limb? Do you think extreme sports is the perfect way to relax?
Well then strap yourselves in!

Did you love your trip to Venus! Venus is the testing ground for the Apocalypse! Not for the faint hearted!

If you thought Venus was hardcore, and you're thirsty for more, Time-X has the ultimate vacation package for you!

A grand tour of the craziest places in the Solar System! Let's go!!!!

Mars! Been there, done that, I know, but have you seen a REAL Grand Canyon!

Valles Marineris: the longest Canyon in the solar system! Not only the longest, but the deepest!

Rock climbing,  anyone?

How would you like to jump into this bad boy! At 2485 miles long, there's plenty of parking!

That's the distance from San Fransisco to Washington. Or, just a bit more than the distance from Sydney to Perth!

Holy Frehole!
Not only is this canyon long, stretching a quarter of the way around Mars, it's deep! 7km deep in places.

Hooley Dooley! Cliff jumpers will go insane for this place!

Should we tell them there's almost no atmosphere on Mars, and they'll drop like stones?.....Nah!

Still on Mars!

Enjoy a sunrise atop Olympus Mons.

Olympus Mons is an extremely ancient shield volcano, which has long since become extinct. Sounds lovely!

How'd you like to see the Martian scenery from an altitude of 21.9 kilometres?

That's pretty tall! How tall is Mount Everest in comparison? Do we even care? Look, look at the little poopoo!

Nawwww!!!

Moving on... ahem!

Next stop, Vesta, a lovely little chunk of prime real estate in the Asteroid belt.

Boasting lots of peace and quiet and some really epic views, Vesta has the tallest mountain in the Solar System: Rheasilvia.

Plopped right in the middle of a gigantic crater that takes up 90 percent of the diameter of Vesta,

this monster was formed by a meaty impact with something really big and mean around 1 billion years ago.

Sorry Olympus Mons, Rheasilvia is just a little bit higher than you, at 22 km.

Let's jump in our little space ship and keep heading out!

Where are we now?

Io, orbiting Jupiter, is the most geologically active object in the solar system!

Did someone say geology?

Boring!!!

What does that mean for the extreme sports nut?

Io has 400 active volcanoes! 400! Ride your mountain bike down one of those- there's no shortage of them!

Just ride really fast! This place is a little bit too extreme! I'm not hanging around for that!

We haven't forgotten water sports! Europa is the place to go for extreme deep sea diving!

Back on earth the deepest point in the ocean is the Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean, which gets to 12 km below sea level.

You could hide majestic Mount Everest inside it. Poor Everest, a little bit inadequate today!

Europa orbits Jupiter, and looks pretty serene, but that pretty icy shell hides an ocean averaging 62 km deep!

I want to explore that myself! Now! Just be careful though, extreme sportsters; Europa may have it's own life. No littering and no feeding the natives!

That's some pretty serious water! On to our next stop: Neptune and Uranus!

If extreme weather is your thing, then line up! Go hang-gliding in these winds! On Uranus, winds in the upper atmosphere blow along at over 900 kph!

Stop the world, I wanna get off!
But wait, there's more!

On Neptune, similar winds scream along at a brain splattering 2100 kph! Just think about it. Whiplash from hell, anyone?

If you still can't get jumping off rocks out of your system, then you will LOVE Miranda, one of the moons of Uranus. What's so great about Miranda?

Only the TALLEST CLIFFS IN THE ENTIRE SOLAR SYSTEM!!

For some colon twisting thrills, these cliffs fit the bill. At 20 km deep, it'll be a real high jump!

Thing is though, we offer this jump to newbies.

Why? Because with Miranda's tiny gravity, it'll take 12 minutes to fall to the bottom!

Watch and find out! Enjoy! 

References and Resources:

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/rains-of-terror-on-exoplanet-hd-189733b

https://www.space.com/21157-uranus-neptune-winds-revealed.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valles_Marineris

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110404.html

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/io

https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_956.html

https://www.space.com/27334-uranus-frankenstein-moon-miranda.html

Music:

"Big Rock" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Animations: Screen captures taken from Universe Sandbox 2, and the Mobile Android app Solar System Scope.

Stock Images: Pixabay

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Please watch: "AstroBiological: Coffee Break" 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJiAtRmZ030
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