Image courtesy of NASA/JPL
Is Venus geologically active? Some articles state that
she is not, but new research points that this is not so.
The Solar System is especial, God created the planets with water and made it geologically active, that is seen in Pluto and Mars.
New research strengthens the case that Venus, long
considered a geologically stagnant world, may be more Earth-like in its
internal dynamics than once believed.
Scientists have uncovered fresh evidence that Venus is
not dead — geologically speaking. Venus and Earth are similar in size
and were bombarded by comparable amounts of water billions of years ago. This
shared This research has provided a new and important insight into the possible
subsurface processes currently shaping the surface of Venus," Gael Cascioli, an assistant research
scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland who co-led the new
study, said in a statement.
"We could hardly believe our eyes"
The latest evidence focuses on dozens of large,
ring-shaped features on Venus' surface. These features, known as coronae, form
when plumes of hot rock rise from deep within the mantle, pushing the crust
upward. As the surface cools and collapses, a circular structure is left
behind. Cascioli and his team simulated several formation scenarios for these
features and compared their results with data from Magellan.
Origin has long fueled one of planetary science's
biggest questions: Why did Venus become a hellish, uninhabitable world while
Earth flourished into a cradle for life?
The predicted and actual data aligned so closely for
some coronae that "we could hardly believe our eyes," Cascioli
told Scientific
American.
Of the 75 coronae they resolved in the Magellan data,
52 appear to sit above buoyant mantle plumes, according to the new study.
"We can now say there are most likely various and
ongoing active processes driving their formation," Anna Gülcher, a planetary scientist
at the University of Bern in Switzerland who co-led the new study, said in the
statement. "We believe these same processes may have occurred early in
Earth's history."
Venus hosts hundreds of such coronae, many of which are found
in areas where the planet's crust is particularly thin and heat from below is
high. Recent research simulated how different rock types behave under Venus'
extreme conditions. The findings suggest that the planet's crust may break off or melt once it reaches
around 40 miles (65 kilometers) thick, and in many areas, it is likely even
thinner.
"That is surprisingly thin, given conditions on
the planet," Justin
Filiberto, deputy chief of NASA's Astromaterials Research and
Exploration Science Division in Houston, who co-authored the study about Venus'
crust, said in a different
statement.
Source:
Sharmila Kuthunur 2025 Venus may be geologically 'alive' after all, shocking analysis of 30-year-old NASA data reveals | Live Science 21 May
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