Planet may not have been dormant for as long as believed

Reports of Venus’s death may be greatly exaggerated, as a fresh look at data from the Magellan spacecraft has found that volcanism could still be occurring on the planet today. Researchers revisited the data using techniques not available when Magellan visited Venus 31 years ago and carried out a large-scale analysis of the landscape.

“Instead of looking at the surface of the volcano or flows, we look at how it deforms the ground around it,” says Megan Russell from the Planetary Science Institute, who led the study. “From this deformation we can infer properties like heat flow local to the volcano.”

From the shape of these features, Russell’s team could discern they may have formed within the last few tens of millions of years – which is recent, in geological terms – or could even still be growing. Either way, it appears volcanism has been happening on Venus more recently than believed. www.psi.edu

IMAGES: PLANETARY SCIENCE INSTITUTE