Latest news with #Shukrayaan
India Today
15-05-2025
- Science
- India Today
Venus is deforming: 36-year-old data reveals big quakes changing the planet
Nasa's Magellan mission launched in 1989 has now revealed unknown facts about Venus, which is also dubbed as Earth's mysterious discovered, hidden in the archival data, new evidence that tectonic activity may be deforming the Venus's is another similarity the planet could be sharing with Earth, which is continually renewed by the constant shifting and recycling of massive sections of crust, called tectonic plates, that float atop a viscous interior. This artist's concept of the large Quetzalpetlatl Corona located in Venus' Southern Hemisphere depicts active volcanism and a subduction zone, where the foreground crust plunges into the planet's interior. (Photo: Nasa) advertisementResearchers studied a type of feature called a corona that ranges in size from dozens to hundreds of miles across. Nasa said that corona is most often thought to be the location where a plume of hot, buoyant material from the planet's mantle rises, pushing against the lithosphere structures are usually oval, with a concentric fracture system surrounding them. Hundreds of coronae are known to exist on details, published in the journal Science Advances, reveal the evidence of this tectonic activity within data from NASA's Magellan mission, which orbited Venus in the 1990s and gathered the most detailed gravity and topography data on the planet currently available.'Coronae are not found on Earth today; however, they may have existed when our planet was young and before plate tectonics had been established. By combining gravity and topography data, this research has provided a new and important insight into the possible subsurface processes currently shaping the surface of Venus,' the study's lead author, Gael Cascioli said. Vast, quasi-circular features on Venus' surface may reveal that the planet has ongoing tectonics. (Photo: ESA) advertisementThe spacecraft used its radar system to see through Venus' thick atmosphere and map the topography of its mountains and plains. Researchers found a number of coronae on Venus. "The most exciting thing for our study is that we can now say there are most likely various and ongoing active processes driving their formation. We believe these same processes may have occurred early in Earth's history,' coauthor Anna Glcher work marks the latest instance of scientists returning to Magellan data to find that Venus exhibits geologic processes that are more Earth-like than originally findings can enhance the development of new spacecraft being readied for Venus that also includes India's Shukrayaan. Must Watch
India Today
12-05-2025
- Science
- India Today
Earth's hot twin just got hotter: New discovery on Venus revealed
Astronomers have long been fascinated by Venus and how it turned into the hellish world that it today from once being similar to Earth with flowing oceans and a healthy ecosystem.A new study now reveals new details about the crust on Venus, which include some surprises about the geology of Earth's hotter twin.A new study, published in Nature Communications, proposes a crust metamorphism process based on rock density and melting cycles underway on the planet. This contrasts expectations that the outermost layer of Venus' crust would grow thicker and thicker over time given its apparent lack of forces that would drive the crust back into the planet's Venus has a crust that is all one piece, with no evidence of subduction caused by plate tectonics like on rocky crust is made up of massive plates that slowly move, forming folds and faults in a process known as plate tectonics. The rocks making up the bottom plate experience changes caused by increasing temperature and pressure as it sink deeper into the interior of the planet. Those changes are known as metamorphism. New details about the crust on Venus include some surprises. (Photo: Nasa) The team analysed that Venus's crust is about 40 kilometres thick on average and at most 65 kilometres is surprisingly thin, given conditions on the planet. It turns out that, according to our models, as the crust grows thicker, the bottom of it becomes so dense that it either breaks off and becomes part of the mantle or gets hot enough to melt," Nasa's Justin Filiberto, co-author of the paper said that while Venus has no moving plates, its crust does experience metamorphism. This finding is an important step toward understanding geological processes and the evolution of the planet.'This breaking off or melting can put water and elements back into the planet's interior and help drive volcanic activity. This gives us a new model for how material returns to the interior of the planet and another way to make lava and spur volcanic eruptions. It resets the playing field for how the geology, crust, and atmosphere on Venus work together," Filiberto discovery comes at a time when India is also readying a Venus mission, dubbed Shukrayaan, to be launched by the end of this Watch
