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Venus鈥檚 beauty treatment? (Image: NASA/Sygma/Corbis)
VENUS is leaking lava. Researchers have found oozing volcanoes on our closest planetary neighbour, a discovery that may help solve the planet鈥檚 deepest geological riddle.
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Past observations revealed that Venus鈥檚 surface is 鈥渘ew鈥�, at least in geological terms. Because it doesn鈥檛 sport many craters, scientists think the planet has been paved over by upwelling lava within the last billion years. There have been hints of more recent volcanism, too, but no solid evidence of fresh lava.
Until now. Eugene Shalygin of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in G枚ttingen, Germany, and his colleagues have dug through data from the European Space Agency鈥檚 Venus Express probe, which orbited from 2006 until 2014. They found short-lived hot patches they attribute to lava lakes bubbling up along a rift.
The team was interested in thermal imaging at wavelengths that penetrate the thick Venusian clouds and looked only at the clearest images available. They found blobs that grew hotter over a few days and then quickly cooled 鈥� as expected for lava flows quenched under the pressure of the atmosphere (Geophysical Research Letters, ).
鈥淭his is such beautiful evidence for volcanism,鈥� says Lindy Elkins-Tanton at Arizona State University in Tempe. Previously, it wasn鈥檛 clear whether Venus spewed lava in frequent trickles or catastrophic global floods. The findings suggest that some flows are little and often.
Active volcanoes also mean the planet has a 鈥渢iny little carbon cycle鈥�, Elkins-Tanton says, which churns between its atmosphere and its insides. We think the exchange of carbon is important for planets to maintain a balanced climate. While Venus鈥檚 cycle clearly wasn鈥檛 enough to make it habitable, the fact it鈥檚 there at all may imply that exoplanets like it, with just one tectonic plate, can keep stable atmospheres.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淟ava lakes may be how Venus stays youthful鈥�