Atmosphere of Venus
The atmosphere of Venus is the layer of gases surrounding Venus. It is composed primarily of carbon dioxide and is much denser and hotter than that of Earth. The temperature at the surface is 740 K (467 °C, 872 °F), and the pressure is 93 bar (9.3 MPa), roughly the pressure found underwater on Earth. The Venusian atmosphere supports opaque clouds made of sulfuric acid, making optical Earth-based and orbital observation of the surface impossible. Information about the topography has been obtained exclusively by radar imaging. Aside from carbon dioxide, the other main component is nitrogen. Other chemical compounds are present only in trace amounts.
Life on Venus
Since the 1960s, increasingly clear evidence from various space probes showed Venus has an extreme climate, with a greenhouse effect generating a constant temperature of about 500 °C on the surface. The atmosphere contains sulfuric acid clouds and the atmospheric pressure at the surface is 90 bar, almost 100 times that of Earth and similar to that of more than deep in Earth's oceans. In such environment, and given the increasingly hostile characteristics of the Venusian weather, the chances of life as we know it are excluded from the surface of Venus.