Venus, erupting?
Lava flow suggests recent volcanism
Beneath its dreary shroud of clouds, Venus could be positively hopping: Planetary geologists have spotted a lava flow they say is just decades old. If confirmed, it would be the youngest evidence for volcanism on Venus.
“The flow we studied seems to be very young — it is still warm inside,” says Nataliya Bondarenko, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She and her colleagues describe their findings in an upcoming issue of Geophysical Research Letters.
Researchers have long thought that Venus must be geologically active, since more than 1,000 volcanoes dot its surface. But scientists have struggled to gather definitive evidence that the planet is active today, like Earth, and not long dead, like Mars.