'Groundbreaking Discovery: Active Volcano Detected on Venus'

March 18, 2023 at 22:52

Venus is still alive. That is the remarkable conclusion of one in the trade journal Science published research, showing that the planet so similar to our Earth still has an active volcano. “A major breakthrough”, according to scientists.

If we write here that Venus has many volcanoes and volcanic rocks, you may not be surprised. But the fact that there is still volcanic activity was also a huge surprise to researchers. They analyzed images of Venus made by NASA’s Magellan spacecraft in the early 1990s.

And what turned out? Maat Mons, one of the volcanoes, clearly changed shape and increased in size over a period of eight months. A clear and unmistakable sign that there has been volcanic activity. The first geological evidence of recent volcanic activity as well. The research was published in the scientific journal Science and has received a great deal of applause in the scientific world.

Robert Herrick, professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, says in a statement that he did not immediately expect that the analysis of those old images would yield anything. “But after about 200 hours of manually comparing images, I saw two images of the same region eight months apart that had clear geological changes from an eruption.”

The professor compares the research to looking for a needle in a haystack. “Even without guarantee that there is a needle. So it was definitely a surprise that we found a change that could be clearly confirmed as true. We were pretty sure Venus is volcanically active, but we didn’t know if that happens every few months or every 10,000 years. Now we know the frequency is a few months. A major breakthrough.”