Geologists say Venus has enough active volcanoes to form a ‘Ring of Fire’
A volcano named Sapas Mons dominates this computer-generated view of the surface of Venus. (NASA/JPL/)In many ways—size, density, chemical make-up—Venus is Earth’s fiery twin. Sure, this radiation-bombarded, sulfuric-acid-raining, blistering hellscape of a planet is hardly a haven of habitability like our home. But the longstanding hypothesis that Venus, like the Earth, is a volcanically active planet, is backed by new evidence. Researchers have identified three dozen features on Venus that appear to be recently active—and probably still are today.“For the first time, we were able to pinpoint specific structures and say, ‘Look, this is not an ancient volcano but an active one,’” says study co-author Laurent Montési, a professor of geology at the University of Maryland. These telltale structures are in the form of rocky, doughnut-like terrestrial features planetary scientists call coronae.In the study, scientists led by Anna Gülcher, a geophysicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich,...