CONDITION The planet, which is called the Morning Star because of its brightness level, is like a star in a dark sky, but it is not as beautiful as it seems. Venus, which is considered to be Earth’s twin, turns out to have both active volcanoes.
Robert Herrick from the Geophysics Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks found evidence that the planet Venus was often hit by volcanic activity or volcanic eruptions. “We can now say that Venus is currently volcanically active in the sense that there are at least a few eruptions per year,” he said Science Daily.
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It turned out that it only took eight months for the mountain hole to grow from just 1 square mile to 1.5 miles wide. Usually such significant scale changes on Earth are associated with volcanic activity, either through eruptions in the vents or movement of magma beneath the vents. This causes the walls of the hole to collapse and causes the hole to become wider.
Herrick compared Magellan’s images from mid-February 1991 to those of mid-October 1991 and saw changes in the vent on the north side of the Maat Mons volcano.
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For those of you who don’t know, Magellan is a space probe that was launched on May 4, 1989 and was used to map the surface of Venus using synthetic aperture radar and measure the planet’s gravitational field. Through this Magellan, Herrick saw the Maat Mons vent develop into an irregular shape that widened to approximately 1.5 square miles and indicated volcanic activity.
Basically, the volcanoes on Venus are much wider in shape than the towering mountains on Earth. This is due to the lower slope of the mountains on Venus.
“Ozza (another volcano) and Maat Mons have comparable volumes to the largest volcanoes on Earth, but have a lower slope, so they are more spread out,” Herrick said.
In this case, the walls of the mountain pit tended to be shorter, perhaps only a few hundred feet high, causing the hole to be nearly filled to the brim. Researchers speculate that a lava lake also formed in the hole during these eight months. It has hot temperatures, plus active volcanic activity too. Still want to move planets? (kmp)
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