Planet Venus is home to active volcanoes, study finds

The existence of volcanoes on Venus has long been suspected. Thanks to data from the Magellan probe, a geologist from the University of Annunzio in Italy says he has found traces of recent volcanic activities on the “twin sister of the Earth”.

It is a wonderful and unlivable planet, an uninhabitable hell. Venus, the most beautiful planet in the solar system, as indicated by its name inspired by the Roman goddess of love, largely neglected by the latest space exploration missions, finds itself once again in the spotlight, after the publication from the study of a geologist from the University of Annunzio in Italy, in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Thanks to data obtained by the Magellan space probe in the 1990s, this scientist was able to establish the presence of traces of lava flows just under the surface of Venus. However, if scientists had been asking themselves this crucial question of the volcanic activity of what is also nicknamed the Shepherd’s Star for a long time, they had not yet found the “smocking gun” to prove it. The last indications of activity date back to around 2.5 million years ago.

If Venus is sometimes called “the twin sister of the Earth”, due to their composition, diameter and mass, the conditions of life on the surface of these two rocky planets differ radically. Venus’ atmosphere is much denser, thicker and toxic, due to an extreme greenhouse effect, and it is also the hottest planet in the solar system. It’s 465°C there, a fairly hostile climate.

However, it is precisely these differences that interest science, the differences and similarities in the geological processes of rocky planets, which offer valuable clues about the evolution of their atmosphere, but also the conditions necessary for life.

We will now have to be patient to find out more, with the next space missions from NASA and the European Space Agency being planned for the end of the decade. But in the meantime, planetologists can now affirm it: we can think of Venus as a world, unlivable certainly, but alive, in any case far from being fixed. So even when you think everything is off, there’s often something stirring inside.