Venus experienced recent volcanic activity: NASA

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By Mary Madigan, News.com.au

March 18, 2023 | 15:15

Venus has long been thought to be a dying planet, but new discoveries have shown promising signs of activity.

New evidence suggests geological activity is occurring on Venus.

The discovery has been made thanks to some old images of Venus, which scientists claim show evidence of recent volcanic activity.

NASA’s Magellan spacecraft visited Venus in the 1990s and took pictures.

The stunning images reveal that a volcanic vent grew in size and changed shape over the course of eight months.

NASA published these new findings on its official website.

Robert Herrick, a research professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a member of the scientific team that led the search for the archival data, admitted he was surprised to make such a big discovery.

“NASA’s selection of the VERITAS mission inspired me to look for recent volcanic activity in the Magellan data,” he said.

“I didn’t really expect to be successful, but after about 200 hours of manually comparing the images of different Magellan orbits, I saw two images of the same region taken eight months apart that showed clear geological changes caused by an eruption.”

Prof Herrick also revealed how he was able to tell that activity had taken place based on some images from 30 years ago.

“Only a few of the simulations matched the images, and the most likely scenario is that volcanic activity occurred on the surface of Venus during the Magellan mission,” he said.

“Although this is only one data point for an entire planet, it confirms that there is modern geologic activity.”

This is particularly interesting because Venus is Earth’s closest planetary neighbor.

Venus has also been dubbed Earth’s “sister planet” because they are similar in size and mass.

Venus is the second planet from the Sun, while Earth is the third.

To put that into perspective, it would still take nearly four months to travel from Earth to Venus.