The findings, reveal not only that the planet's surface is currently a turbulent place, but offer insights into its geological past and future.
"Aside from Earth," Herrick says,"it's the only planet that has true mountain ranges and a huge variety of volcanic features." These features include lava fields, canals carved by molten rock, and hundreds, if not thousands of volcanoes.
"Thirty years ago," he says,"it was just not feasible to pan around and zoom in and out and flip back and forth between different global mosaics." But computer hardware and software have improved substantially, and so Herrick was able to pore over the imagery.Herrick focused his search around the highest volcano on Venus called Maat Mons, named after the ancient Egyptian goddess of truth and justice.
Unlike Earth, Venus doesn't have plate tectonics. So researchers have been trying to work out how the planet has evolved geologically over the last four-and-a-half billion years and where it might be headed. Herrick and his colleague"It is nice to have a visual confirmation of the volcanic activity on Venus," says, a quantum astrochemist at Bard College who wasn't involved in the research.
But Herrick says that Earth's similarity to Mars is somewhat superficial, being pretty much limited to surface features like sand blowing around, desert landscapes, and signs of what may have once been lakes and rivers.
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