Venus IS volcanically active: Scientists find ‘strong evidence’ of eruptions and lava flows

Venus is known to be covered with more volcanoes than any other planet in the solar system.

And now scientists have “strong evidence” that some of these volcanoes are still active.

Images from NASA’s Magellan spacecraft show a vent — a vent through which volcanic activity takes place — on the planet that has changed shape over an eight-month period.

It had grown from about 0.85 square miles (2.2 square kilometers) to 1.5 square miles (3.9 square kilometers), suggesting eruptions and lava flows are underway on Venus, according to researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The discovery casts doubt on whether Earth’s sister planet could harbor microbial life.

Venus is a terrestrial planet similar in size to Earth, but has a surface temperature of about 867°F (464°C) and a pressure 92 times that of our home planet.

Known as Earth’s “evil twin,” scientists believe Venus was likely habitable 700 million years ago, before it mysteriously became habitable.

Today, Venus is a world of intense heat, crushing atmospheric pressure, and clouds of corrosive acid.

With 65 percent of the planet consisting of a mosaic of volcanic lava plains, scientists have known for some time that Venus has a younger surface than the other “non-terrestrial” rocky planets Mars and Mercury.

While no eruption has yet been recorded on the planet, there is evidence that these volcanoes are still active.

This includes the detection of “hot spots” with above-average temperatures, active “coronae” formed when hot material erupts through the Earth’s crust from within the planet, and sulfur dioxide and phosphine gas in the atmosphere, believed to be released by volcanoes.

But simulations of geodynamic processes on the planet give different predictions about the level of ongoing volcanic activity.

“Estimates of how often eruptions may occur on Venus have been speculative, ranging from a few large eruptions per year to one such eruption every few or even decades,” said author Dr Robert Herrick.

For the new study published today in Scienceresearchers wanted to find more convincing signs of recent eruptions.

The authors analyzed radar images taken by the Magellan spacecraft, which orbited the planet from 1989 to 1994, looking for more conclusive signs of eruptions.

Until recently, searching through these images to find evidence of lava flows took a lot of time, which is why not many people have tried to do this.

“It’s really only in the last decade or so that the Magellan data has become available at full resolution, mosaic and easily manipulated by a researcher with a typical personal workstation,” said Dr Herrick.

Between 1990 and 1992, the probe would take pictures at the same location Venus two or three times, and some of these were later identified as potential volcanic hot spots.

Two images of a particular vent on the huge shield volcano Maat Mons were taken eight months apart.

Size Mons is comparable in volume to the largest volcanoes on Earth, but has lower slopes and so is more spread out, said Dr. Herrick.

The researchers saw that between February and October 1991 it had grown and changed from a round formation to an irregular shape.

They also believe that its walls had shrunk and that it was filled almost to the brim with a kind of lava lake in the second image.

However, they couldn’t tell if it was still hot and molten, or if it had had enough time to cool and solidify.

They also saw “volcanic flows downhill from the vent” in the second image, but couldn’t confirm that it was present, just not visible, in the first image.

Therefore, they argue that these changes may very well be due to lava coming through the vent as a result of volcanic activity.

An eruption at the vent, or movement of magma below causing the walls to collapse, would have a similar effect on Earth.

Both cases would occur because of nearby volcanic eruptions and not earthquakes, leading the researchers to rule out one of the latter on Venus.

Dr Herrick said: ‘We can now say that Venus is currently volcanically active in the sense that there are at least a few eruptions per year.

“We can expect the upcoming Venus missions to observe new volcanic flows that have occurred since the Magellan mission ended three decades ago, and we should see some activity as the two upcoming orbital missions collect images.”