Are the stresses of life getting too much? Fancy a relaxing getaway to a planet with stifling sulfuric acid clouds, choking quantities of CO2 and punishing amounts of atmospheric pressure? Yeah, neither do Chelsea and Leah. That’s why, with the help of planetary scientist Paul Byrne at Washington University in St. Louis, they’re reinventing Venus, our uninhabitable neighbour. Together, they attempt to clear the air, smash it senseless with asteroids and move it farther from the sun… all for a few quintillion dollars. Dead Planets Society is a podcast that takes outlandish ideas about how to tinker with the cosmos – from punching a hole in a planet to unifying the asteroid belt to destroying the sun – and subjects them to the laws of physics to see how they fare. Your hosts are Leah Crane and Chelsea Whyte. If you have a cosmic object you’d like us to figure out how to destroy, email the team at [email protected]. It may just feature in a later episode… And if you just want to chat about this episode or wrecking the cosmos more generally, find @chelswhyte and @downhereonearth on Twitter/X. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.