Scientists have identified 37 volcanic structures on Venus that appear to be recently active, and probably still are today, painting the picture of a geologically dynamic planet and not a dormant world as previously thought.
The investigation focused on ring-shaped structures called coronae, caused by a stream of hot rock from deep within the planet, and provided compelling evidence of recent widespread magmatic and tectonic activity on the surface of Venus, researchers said Monday. .
Lacking the plate tectonics that gradually reshape the Earth’s surface, many scientists had long thought that Venus was essentially geologically inactive for the past 500 million years.
“Our work shows that some of that interior heat can still reach the surface even today. It is clear that Venus is not as geologically dead or inactive as previously thought, ”said Earth scientist and planetary Anna Gülcher of the Zurich Institute of Geophysics, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The researchers determined the type of geological features that could exist only in a newly active corona, a telltale trench surrounding the structure. They then tracked radar images of Venus from NASA’s Magellan spacecraft in the 1990s to find crowns that fit the bill. Of the 133 crowns examined, 37 appear to have been active in the past 2 million to 3 million years, a blink of an eye in geological time.
“In my opinion, many of these structures are really active today,” said Laurent Montesi, a geophysicist at the University of Maryland and co-author of the study.
Crowns are essentially fields of lava flows and major faults that span a large circular area. Many of the 37 reside within a gigantic ring in the planet’s southern hemisphere, including a colossal 1,100-mile (2,100-km) diameter corona called Artemis.
Venus, Earth’s closest and slightly smaller planetary neighbor, is covered in clouds of sulfuric acid and has surface temperatures high enough to melt lead.
