KA-BOOM

Volcanoes on Venus May Be Erupting As We Speak

A tantalizing new way to think about Earth’s closest neighbor.

When we talk about Earth’s neighbors, Mars is the talk of the town. Everyone is dreaming of a future where humans have settled the Red Planet to uncover its vast mysteries—including ones that may lead us to confirming the existence of alien life. And so a lot of people tend to forget Earth’s other nearby neighbor, Venus—which is seemingly closer to being Earth’s twin given its size. The problem is Venus also seems like an extraterrestrial version of hell due to its ungodly surface temperatures and pressure—not to mention the clouds of sulfuric acid perpetually smothering its skies.

Nevertheless, Venus is alive, in a manner of speaking. Scientists have long thought that its insides are volcanically active—which would bolster the notion that Venus is still evolving as a planet and capable of transforming into something that may not be so hellish. The big question, however, has been whether those volcanic eruptions and lava flows are something that are happening right now, not simply within the next tens of thousands of years.

“There’s no doubt there’s going to be a volcanic eruption in Venus’s future,” Robert Herrick, a researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, told The Daily Beast. “But there was no certainty that was really going to happen.”

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Herrick may have just found an answer to that question. In a new study published Mar. 15 in Science, he and Scott Hensley (at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory) ran a new analysis of data collected by NASA’s Magellan space probe in the early 1990s, and found evidence of geological changes on the Venusian surface that suggests there was volcanic activity as recently as 1991.

Although the Magellan data is now decades old, scientists are still learning new things thanks to advances in analytical software that is able to spot fresh insights that could not be detected before. Herrick led an investigation into digital images of Venus to find new features formations on the surface of the planet, focusing on two of Venus’ largest volcanos: Ozza and Maat Mons.

Magellan imaged this area in February and October 1991. In those eight months, there was a change to a vent located on the north side of a domed shield volcano part of Maat Mons. The vent grew from just under a square mile in size, to roughly 1.5 square miles. The vents walls also became shorter by a few hundred feet. Herrick concluded that a lava lake had formed in the intervening eight months and was the cause of these changes.

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If that’s true, then it means Venus was volcanically active just three decades ago; and is almost certainly experiencing volcanic activity even now. Like with Earth’s volcanoes, eruptions probably happen every few years or so.

Of course, it’s possible there are other explanations for these changes at Maat Mons. The biggest one is that an earthquake could have triggered a collapse of the vent’s walls. Herrick is skeptical of this alternative scenario, however, since vent collapses of this scale that have been observed on Earth are always associated with nearby volcanic eruptions.

“What is certain is that the vent has changed,” said Herrick. “I really think it takes some contortions to make those changes occur without some kind of volcanism.”

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The findings are interesting on their own, but their real impact may be on how we proceed with future research of Venus. NASA has already greenlit two new robotic missions to Venus: VERITAS and DAVINCI+, which are set to launch in the early 2030s and late 2020s. VERITAS is specifically designed to study the surface of Venus and map it out extensively.

Herrick believes the new findings could point to new targets the probe should focus on in order to observe current volcanic activity. “These upcoming missions are really going to move the ball forward,” said Herrick.

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