Venus is so hot right now. Literally, it has the hottest surface on average in the Solar System. Figuratively, it is “heating up” in popularity after the selection of three new missions by NASA and ESA—and the discovery of multitudinous (candidate) Venus-analogue exoplanets. In this talk, I will bring you despair and hope. On the despair side, our profound ignorance about Venus belies any claim to understand the rocky planet’s evolution in general. However, we can dare to dream that we will answer some of our most pressing questions about Venus in the next few decades.

Dr. Joe O'Rourke is an Assistant Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, where he was previously an Exploration Postdoctoral Fellow. He has a PhD in Planetary Science from Caltech and a BS in Geology & Geophysics and Astronomy & Physics from Yale University.

For the Zoom information, please get in touch with Jannis Simões-Seymens (jseymens@stanford.edu)