Venus, an extremely hot world that is also one of the closest planets to Earth, may harbor active volcanos, a new study has suggested.
The research, authored by Robert R. Herrick from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Scott Hensley from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, is based on the survey of the planet conducted by the Magellan spacecraft back in early 1990s via synthetic aperture radar.
Having examined these images of the Venusian surface, the researchers have identified what they believe to be a volcanic vent about 2.2 square kilometers in acreage, which apparently "changed shape in the eight months between two radar images."
"Additional volcanic flows downhill from the vent are visible in the second epoch images, though we cannot rule out that they were present but invisible in the first epoch due to differences in imaging geometry," Herrick and Hensley wrote in the abstract of their work. "We interpret these results as ongoing volcanic activity on Venus."