According to research conducted by an international team of researchers, Earth’s “sister planet,” Venus, is likely a volcanically active planet. Using data collected during the European Space Agency’s Venus Express mission, the researchers identified massive temperature surges along the planet’s surface. These so-called “hotspots” resulted from molten lava flows traversing Venus’ surface.
Study co-author James W. Head, a geologist at Brown University, spoke of his team’s remarkable discovery: “We were able to show strong evidence that Venus is volcanically, and thus internally, active today. This is a major finding that helps us understand the evolution of planets like our own.”
Venus was “volcanically resurfaced” in the last third of the solar system’s past. However, several hundred million years ago, the planet went through a period of relative tranquility, with little volcanic activity witnessed.
Now, scientists have looked at the thermal images espied by the Venus Express spacecraft. The probe’s Venus Monitoring Camera helped researchers locate a series of transient hotspots, many of which are believed to have reached temperatures of several hundred degrees Fahrenheit. These fleeting temperature spikes spanned vast distances, in a region known as the Ganiki Chasma, with hotspots ranging from one square kilometer to 200 kilometers plus.
Study lead Mikhail Ivanov has previously studied the Ganiki Chasma rift zone. During the 1980s, as part of the Soviet Venera and U.S. Magellan missions, Ivanov and colleagues discovered that the expansive area was geologically young.
“The active anomalies detected by Venus Express fall exactly where we had mapped these relatively young deposits and suggest ongoing activity,” stated Ivanov.
According to Ivanov, current data seems to point to Venus being a geodynamically active planet. A 2010 study of Venus’ volcanoes provided strong evidence to suggest the existence of active lava flows. Further study has also confirmed the presence of sulfur dioxide within the upper atmosphere of Venus, corroborating the researchers’ suspicions.
The study, entitled Active volcanism on Venus in the Ganiki Chasma rift zone, was published in the June 19 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
