Unexpected Space Discovery: An Active Volcano on Venus | News

Scientists reviewed archival images of Venus taken more than 30 years ago, in the 1990s. Then it was discovered that the Maat Mons volcano changed hands at some point in time, which appears at a new point Stady.

Over the course of eight months, the volcano changed shape. NASA wrote in a press release that it may have been an eruption.

Maat Mons is the highest volcano on Venus. It is about eight kilometers high.

“about 200 hours”

The discovery is the first of its kind. And according to researcher Robert Herrick, a professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a member of NASA’s Project Veritas, it was unexpected.

– I wasn’t expecting immediate success, but after about 200 hours of manually comparing images from the Magellan orbiter, I saw two images of the same area taken eight months later that showed clear geological changes caused by a volcanic eruption, he says in a statement.

called “Twin Earth”

By examining active volcanoes, scientists can further understand how the inner planets affect their outer surface. This, in turn, affects the possibilities for evolution and life on the planets, according to NASA.

Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system, about 61 million km from Earth. It is sometimes called “Earth’s twin” because the planets are roughly the same size. The diameter of Venus is 12,104 km, while that of Earth is 12,742 km.

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