Earth is pretty special, with its breathable atmosphere, abundant water and habitable climate. But if we did have the technology to arrive and survive on other planets, what would it be like to stand on them? How would it smell? What other-worldly sights would amaze us?

Suspend reality as we take you for a quick, highly theoretical visit to a few interesting locations in our solar system.

Mercury — a hot place to chill

Welcome to a planet where there's blissfully little going on. It's the perfect place to chill out because there's little in the way of distraction.

First of all, there's no need to worry about the weather forecast. Mercury has no atmosphere — it's been burnt off by the Sun. It's definitely not a destination for storm chasers.

But there's a downside, says Dr Amanda Bauer, astronomer and co-presenter of ABC's Cosmic Vertigo podcast.

"I'd really miss seeing beautiful sunsets and sunrises while on the surface of Mercury. Its lack of atmosphere would not allow for all those beautiful colours from the Sun's scattered light."

There's one important variable on Mercury, and that's the temperature. When the Sun beams down on the grey, dust-covered, cratered surface, the temperature skyrockets to a maximum of 427 degrees Celsius. And that hot, sunny day would seem endless to Earthlings because a day on Mercury lasts for 1,392 hours (or 58 Earth days).

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"When the Sun eventually rises it will bring a startling change to the black sky as a blinding ball of fire rises above the horizon and raises the temperature on your skin by hundreds of degrees in seconds," says Dr Alan Duffy, astronomer and Cosmic Vertigo co-presenter.

"Not very romantic."

And once the long day is done, be prepared. The dark Mercury nights are shatteringly cold with temperatures plummeting to minus 173 degrees Celsius.

For something a little bit special there's the ice lurking within the polar craters to check out. But there's not much else happening on Mercury, other than the odd cosmic collision and the occasional earthquake.

And because of its non-existent atmosphere, you'll hear no sounds and smell no odours on Mercury. It truly is a planetary version of the isolation tank.

Approaching Mercury. This image was taken by the Messenger space probe ( NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington )

Hell on Venus

Named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty, Venus is ironically pretty close to hellish. The landscape is bathed in an eerie orange haze and the air is thick with cloud. And unlike Mercury, there is a pervasive smell of rotten eggs.

"It's too hot for humans (or our robots) to survive on the surface and there's too much atmosphere to see the stars," says Dr Bauer.

Temperatures can soar to a rather uncomfortable 470 degrees Celsius — even hotter than Mercury — due to an extreme greenhouse effect, where the thick atmosphere traps the Sun's heat. And the weight of all that thick cloudy atmosphere would make hard work of hiking on the planet's rocky surface, says Dr Duffy.

"Trying to stroll through the atmosphere would be exhausting, as the air is so thick it would feel like more like walking through water than air."

Nonetheless, there are some out-of-this-world sights to see on Venus, and first up would be its wacky weather. You need to journey into the upper atmosphere to experience it, but up there you'll find atmospheric lightning bursts and sulphuric acid rain that evaporates long before it hits the ground.

Perhaps one of the strangest things about a trip to Venus would be watching the glow of the Sun move backwards across the sky, since Venus spins in the opposite direction to Earth. Although, thanks to Venus' ridiculously thick atmosphere, the odd sight of sunrise in the west and sunset in the east would be a non-event.

A year on Venus is not too different to the length of its day — the planet takes 225 Earth days to orbit the Sun and 117 Earth days to spin on its axis. So while the days would last forever on this hellish planet, the years would fly by.



Prospect for water on Mars

Mars is currently colonised by robots that trundle around its rocky surface, leaving tracks in its red dust.

"I'd definitely be up for hanging out with the robots on the surface of Mars," says Dr Bauer.

After Mercury and Venus, Mars would be almost a breath of fresh air — except it's not, because you can't actually breathe the air on Mars.

But respiration aside, this is a rugged and fascinating place to visit, with the largest mountain in our solar system (Olympus Mons), ancient volcanoes and plenty of other spectacular features to explore. Temperatures are almost respectable, from highs of 20 degrees Celsius to lows of minus 126 degrees Celsius.

The surface of Mars looks like a rocky desert on Earth, until you glance up at the orange-tinted sky.

Welcome to Bonneville Crater, Mars. ( Supplied: NASA )

At night, that sky is full of stars and you can even spot our home planet. Sunrise and sunset are very much like what you'd see on a hazy day on Earth.

You'd want to time your visit to avoid the giant dust storms. These can form quickly when dust blown into the atmosphere is heated up by the Sun, forming storms the size of continents that last for weeks. And every few years, a massive storm covers the entire planet in dust.

But most exciting would be joining the hunt for water on Mars.

"We've found evidence of salty water flowing during different seasons so that would be fun to explore," says Dr Bauer.

"The robots haven't been able to dig very far below the surface, so I'd do that as a first experiment."



It's raining diamonds and helium on the gas giants

Is it even possible to land on one of the gas giants, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune? Would you fall through and come out the other side?

"Unfortunately, there is no surface to land on," says Dr Bauer.

Visiting spacecraft haven't yet managed to get much detail about what lies at the "surface" or core of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus or Neptune.

"We don't know if there is a rocky core lurking deep within the gas giants in our Solar System, because the spacecraft we've sent haven't been able to survive the extreme pressures and temperatures of the gassy outer layers," says Dr Bauer.

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Viewing any of these giant planets from the safety of a nearby spacecraft would be a humbling experience — the sheer size of them is mind-boggling. Jupiter's giant red spot alone is bigger than any of the inner planets.

"The giant red spot is a massive storm that could swallow two Earths side by side, although it is slowly shrinking," says Dr Bauer.

Saturn's rings would also be amazing to see.

"How could anyone resist the trip just to see the rings around Saturn, and their shadows on the massive gas planet?" says Dr Bauer.

Adding to the visual interest would be Uranus, which rolls around the Sun like a ball. It has the most unusual rotation in our solar system — not only does it spin backwards (like Venus) but its spin axis is knocked on its side.

But the really crazy stuff takes place beneath the surface of the swirling clouds, where the high pressure and extraordinary temperatures mean strange things are likely to happen.

Jupiter may have liquid helium rain pouring down through a liquid hydrogen ocean. Further down, this liquid hydrogen turns into a liquid metal, as the pressure increases to the point that electrons are squeezed off the hydrogen atoms.

Uranus and Neptune are thought to have diamond rain, falling into a giant diamond ocean.

Saturn, meanwhile, boasts something genuinely baffling at its north pole: a hexagonal jet stream.

A false-colour image of the vortex at Saturn's north pole ( Supplied: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute )

Sublime Pluto

After the weirdness of the gas giants, landing on Pluto would be a welcome relief.



A rocky world, covered in ice, you'd definitely have somewhere to stand. And one of the most interesting things to see would be the fine snow made of nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide. However, if you timed a visit to coincide with Pluto orbiting close to the Sun, you'd see the ice change directly to a gas (a process known as sublimation), creating a thin atmosphere around the dwarf planet.

Pluto has some interesting surface features, including craters, troughs and mountains believed to be formed out of a bedrock of water ice. But you'd need to rug up because Pluto is very cold — the average temperature is minus 229 degrees Celsius.

After a frosty stay in the outer solar system, you'll be ready to head back to the comfort of an environment you evolved to survive in: a liveable climate, a breathable atmosphere, and some great sunsets. A place called Earth.