--- title: Why the Discovery of an Active Volcano on Venus Matters description: The more we know about the evolution of rocky worlds, the better we can search for extraterrestrial life. canonical: https://time.com/6264160/why-volcanoes-on-venus-matter/ author: Jeffrey Kluger article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-03-17T17:25:34.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:51:21.243Z article:section: Science og:title: Why the Discovery of an Active Volcano on Venus Matters og:description: The more we know about the evolution of rocky worlds, the better we can search for extraterrestrial life. og:url: https://time.com/6264160/why-volcanoes-on-venus-matter/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt50a5379a93dd61f4/698a3b41cabb1d39b4e513b5/Venus.jpg?branch=production&width=985&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 985 og:image:height: 554 og:image:alt: Venus og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why the Discovery of an Active Volcano on Venus Matters twitter:description: The more we know about the evolution of rocky worlds, the better we can search for extraterrestrial life. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt50a5379a93dd61f4/698a3b41cabb1d39b4e513b5/Venus.jpg?branch=production&width=985&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why the Discovery of an Active Volcano on Venus Matters > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=fd4369de-8ab2-4834-baac-93674ddfd4b5&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Innovator of the Year: Gregory Robinson and The James Webb Space Telescope [Watch (HLS stream): Innovator of the Year: Gregory Robinson and The James Webb Space Telescope](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/vvFzrrBk.m3u8) (4:23)  _Published 2022-12-07. TIME's 2022 Innovator of the Year is Gregory Robinson and The James Webb Telescope_  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Mar 17, 2023 5:25 PM UTC  An image of Venus's Maat Mons, captured by the Magellan orbiter An image of Venus's Maat Mons, captured by the Magellan orbiter NASA/JPL-Caltech  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Mar 17, 2023 5:25 PM UTC Venus had a lot going for it. Roughly the same diameter and density as Earth, it orbits in the solar system’s habitable zone—just the right distance from the sun for liquid water to exist. But the planet’s biological prospects were long ago wrecked by a runaway greenhouse effect that left it with an atmosphere that is 95% carbon dioxide, and 90 times the pressure of Earth’s—the equivalent of being a mile deep in the ocean. Venus’s surface temperatures hover at about 475º C (900º F), or hot enough to melt lead. But there is one fiery feature of Earth that Venus has long been thought to lack: volcanoes. Without the plate tectonics that drive eruptions on Earth, Venus has been said to be a volcanically quiescent place, having seen its last blast perhaps a billion years ago. Or so it seemed. Now, however, a [new paper in _Science_](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm7735) reveals modern-day volcanic activity on Venus—a discovery that may cause scientists to reconsider how rocky planets like Earth form and even help us look for habitable worlds surrounding other stars. The new findings rely on a fresh look at images captured of Venus by NASA’s [Magellan spacecraft](https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/magellan/in-depth/), which orbited the planet taking radar soundings of its surface from 1990 to 1994\. Overall, Magellan mapped more than 40% of Venus’s face—capturing images that [at the time, were stored on DVDs](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-s-magellan-data-reveals-volcanic-activity-on-venus), and shipped to various astronomy labs in cardboard boxes. Now the Magellan images are available to researchers online. Robert Herrick, planetary scientist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and Scott Hensley, senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., took advantage of that fact to give the 30-year-old images a second look. --- ### More from TIME --- The area that attracted their attention is a region known as Alta Regio, near the Venusian equator, that is home to the planet’s two largest dormant volcanoes: Ozza Mons and Maat Mons. What the researchers were looking for were any signs that there still might be residual volcanic activity associated with the giant vents. The mere lack of plate tectonics would not necessarily rule that out: Venus is still rich in subsurface radioactive material that could provide the heat needed to produce an eruption. Hensley and Herrick scrutinized images taken eight months apart—between February 1991 and October 1991—and after about 200 hours of study, they hit paydirt. One small, circular vent associated with Maat Mons that, in the February image, measured 2.2 sq. km (1 sq. mi.), had doubled its size and become kidney shaped in the October image. “The vent is nearly filled to its rim in the \[second\] image,” the researchers wrote in their paper. “We speculate that a lava lake formed during the 8-month gap between images.” But “speculate” was a key word. During the two passes Magellan made over the Alta Regio region, it took its radar soundings of the target vent from different angles. It was always thus possible that the seeming change in the size and shape of the vent was just a result of a change in perspective. The researchers thus ran hundreds of computer simulations of the twin images, trying to determine if it was possible to reproduce the change they had seen through mere shifts in angle of sight. But the tests came up empty. “The simulation cannot reproduce the vent’s kidney shape,” Hensley and Herrick wrote. “We definitely conclude that the vent has changed.” Where there is one volcano, there should be more—perhaps many more. The researchers studied just 1.5% of Venus’s surface in their 200 hours of image comparisons and they plan to dive back into the three-decade-old pictures for more. “While this is just one data point for an entire planet,” Hensley said in a statement released by NASA, “it confirms there is modern geological activity \[on Venus\].” That has implications that go beyond just one planet in our own familiar solar system. [More than 5,000 exoplanets](https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/faq/6/how-many-exoplanets-are-there/) have been spotted in our galaxy alone and the true jackpot discoveries are small, rocky worlds with a solid surface where life could take hold. Venus, Earth, and Mars all check that box, and all orbit in the habitable zone. But only Earth caught all of the lucky breaks to become the garden world that it is. The better we grasp how such planets form, the better we will know where else to go looking for life. “A bunch of big-picture scenarios have been put forth to explain why Earth and Venus are so different now,” wrote Herrick in an email to TIME, “including some that have Venus as habitable with something like plate tectonics for three quarters of its history. In terms of bigger picture ideas, the evolution of Venus and Mars through time will shape our ideas about what controls where the habitable zone is around other stars in other solar systems.” “Resolving questions like \[the evolution of Venus\],” Hensley added in an email to TIME, “will provide clues to rocky planets’ evolution more generally and which one may be habitable or not.” The search for life in the cosmos goes on. The new findings from so close to home advance that effort at least one small step. ## Transcript We promised a telescope that was a hundred times more powerful than what we've had before, but not only, is it working. This is better than we expected, time to self. James Webb begins a voyage back to the birth of the universe. The first science images that we released in July the president, rolling this out. That's a pretty big deal. The world is really end of this telescope and is along for the ride and wants to know, what the next stop on the road trip, is When was the the real driver? Let's get this thing done. Whatever it takes their issues along the way long before I came on and and no one religion. When you want to do both things, that's really would be some unprecedented risk. And you just try to minimize as much as possible. That's what the team did. They are, they did an excellent job with it. We do a lot of comparisons to I will rightfully so because then I was supposed to be Premier for 30 years Weber's. Probably twice the size of Hubble close to half. The mass was Bubbles and Laura, KB and web is a million miles out, but to see the difference in Clarity and the difference of what you see, and the difference in how quickly you can get the same image, it was thrilling to see those. For Dave Mustaine there's no joystick. It's it's not like anybody's, you know what a little more, the left little the right, it's more like a playlist. We have a very detailed playlist or set of recipes. Every minute of the time is scripted, is in one of those recipes and we schedule the telescope that a week at a time. On launch day, I was here for us. The moment that was so beautiful. That first. Oh my gosh. Things are just going to go. Well on this project was the separation from the launch vehicle that's when this crowd cheered for life. I did not. I don't know if that was just confidence in the team and and the systems and the thrill of Separation than solo race. The Star by blowing, now taking its pursuit of cosmological Discovery and it was the first day that we got to see the images that were going to go public. We all crowded around the corner and it was just gorgeous. For science perspective, star formation. And you're getting a sea star cluster formation within Galaxy. I'm taking out, but I'm also just like, oh my gosh, this is going to show everybody that it works. Off work would fix my whole life and there was no better seen than to see a bunch of Geeks. Just fall over themselves with joy. It's a new window into the history of our universe and today we're going to get a glimpse of the first light to shine through that window light from other worlds orbiting Stars far beyond her own president spending time to talk to us about Webb and roll this out to the world quite quite satisfied, a real sense of our own Galaxy formed our own solar system than our sun on our planets form or not. And lastly, I think we're going to learn so many new questions that we have to go off and try to answer. 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