Discovering an Active Volcano on Venus: A Major Breakthrough

If we write here that Venus has many volcanoes and volcanic rocks, you may not be surprised. But the fact that there was still volcanic activity was a big surprise to the researchers. They analyzed images of Venus taken by NASA’s Magellan spacecraft in the early 1990s.

What happened? Maat Mons, a volcano, has visibly changed and increased in size over a period of eight months. A clear and unmistakable sign of volcanic activity. The first geological evidence of recent volcanic activity as well. The research has been published in the scientific journal Science and has received a great deal of applause in the scientific world.

Robert Herrick, a professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, says in a statement that he didn’t immediately expect that analysis of those old photos would yield anything. “But after about 200 hours of manually comparing the images, I saw two images of the same area eight months apart that had obvious geological changes from a volcanic eruption.”

The professor compares research to finding a needle in a haystack. “Even without the guarantee of a needle. So it was definitely a surprise that we found a change that could clearly be confirmed as true. We were sure that Venus was volcanically active, but we didn’t know if it happened every few months or every 10,000 years. Now we We know the frequency is a few months. Big breakthrough.”