How does Venus’s massive atmosphere effectively protect the planet from total solar wind stripping over billions of years?

The solar wind interacts with the gas itself, creating a protective buffer of plasma.

The retention of Venus's thick atmosphere in the absence of an intrinsic magnetic field is counterintuitive but explained by the sheer mass of that atmosphere. Because the atmosphere is so dense and massive, the solar wind does not impact the planetary surface or even the ionosphere immediately; rather, it interacts significantly with the upper layers of the gas itself. This interaction generates a plasma buffer layer externally, essentially creating a magnetic boundary where the solar wind is deflected around the bulk of the gaseous envelope. If Venus had a thin atmosphere, the solar wind would strip it away rapidly, but the massive extent of its current atmospheric blanket allows it to rely on this externally generated protection.