Venus has lava tubes, and they're weird

 

Image courtesy of JSC/NASA

Joel Kontinen

Could massive underground tunnels exist on Venus?  Yes, according to recent studies.

It has been suggested that lava tubes - underground tunnels carved out by molten rock - might be on Venus, and now we have direct evidence that this is the case.

We now know for sure that massive underground tunnels, carved by lava, exist on Venus – and they are surprisingly wide and different from those on any other planet.

It is uncontroversial that lava tubes – underground tunnels carved out by molten rock – exist on Earth, the moon and Mars. Smaller planets with low gravity tend to form more cavernous tubes, in part because the rock walls are less likely to collapse with weaker gravity. On the moon, for instance, the tubes are so large that scientists have proposed using them as live-in shelters for astronauts, providing shielding from the harsh solar wind.

 Source:

Alex Wilkins 2025 Venus has lava tubes, and they're weird | New Scientist 22 September 

Lava erupting on Jupiter’s volcanic moon, Io, is over 1000°C

 

Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/AS​I/INAF/JIRAM/. 

Joel Kontinen

If the solar system is 4. 6 billion years old, how can the following statement be true?

A new estimate made using radio telescopes put the lava that is erupting on lava erupting on Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io is over 1000°C.

“Erin Redwing at the University of California, Berkeley, and her colleagues analysed observations of Io’s atmosphere made using the Atacama Large Millimetre/Submillimetre Array (ALMA) – a collection of radio telescopes operated by the European Southern Observatory within Chile’s Atacama desert.”

This study “focused on sodium chloride and potassium chloride gases that are thought to be belching from Io. ”

Io’s volcanoes are active and surprisingly violent, suggesting that they could not have been spouting lava for millions of years.…

 Source: 

Gater, Will. 2022, Lava erupting on Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io is over 1000°C.  New Scientist 6 October.…