Did you know that on Venus it 'snows' metal?

The space is truly amazing! We have already seen here that on Mars it snows dry ice, that on Saturn giant hurricanes occur and that on Mercury there is an ocean of lava. The last of the bizarre things that occur on other planets is that Venus snows metal. According to Discovery News, right on the top of the Venusian mountains is a layer of "snow" that researchers could not understand until recently.

According to scientists, the surface temperatures of Venus are too high - at around 480 ° C! - so that snow can be there, at least in the way we know it. Instead, scientists have found that these layers are actually a kind of “frost” made up of two types of metal, galena and bismutinite.

Metal fog

These elements are deposited on mountain tops due to pyrite vaporization - abundant mineral on the surface of Venus - which ends up in the atmosphere. However, when this “metallic mist” reaches higher altitudes, it eventually condenses to form the shiny metal layer that covers the tops of the Venusian mountains.

In fact, there are very high mountains there. The Maxwell Montes, for example, is the tallest mountain massif of Venus, whose highest peak reaches a maximum height of 11 kilometers, ie 3 kilometers higher than Mount Everest. So just imagine if you could visit a place like this, covered in metallic snow and with breathtaking views!