Researchers scouring decades-old spacecraft data have found clear signs of recent volcanic activity on Venus.
Despite all its hostility, Venus — our nearest planetary neighbor — is actually pretty similar to Earth. So much so that Herrick calls it our"true sibling" in the solar system. The resemblance is"driven by what's going on in their interior," he says.
"Thirty years ago," he says,"it was just not feasible to pan around and zoom in and out and flip back and forth between different global mosaics." But computer hardware and software have improved substantially, and so Herrick was able to pore over the imagery.Herrick focused his search around the highest volcano on Venus called Maat Mons, named after the ancient Egyptian goddess of truth and justice.
Unlike Earth, Venus doesn't have plate tectonics. So researchers have been trying to work out how the planet has evolved geologically over the last four-and-a-half billion years and where it might be headed. Herrick and his colleague"It is nice to have a visual confirmation of the volcanic activity on Venus," says, a quantum astrochemist at Bard College who wasn't involved in the research.
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