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KOMPAS.com – Venus is one of the planets in the Solar System which is said to have volcanoes. But how many volcanoes are Venus, and are the planet’s volcanoes still active?
In a study, researchers revealed the number of volcanoes that exist on Venus.
Quoted from Sci-News, Friday (31/3/2023) researchers used Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery from NASA’s Magellan mission to catalog volcanoes in planet Venus on a global scale.
“Since NASA’s Magellan mission in the 1990s, we’ve had a lot of big questions about Venus’ geology, including its volcanic characteristics,” said Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at the University of Washington in St. Louis.
“But with the recent discovery of active volcanism on Venus, understanding where volcanoes are concentrated on the planet, how many, how big, has become even more important, especially as we will have new data for Venus in the coming years,” said Byrne again.
Also read: The First Time, Researchers Find 37 Active Volcanoes on Venus
There are 85,000 volcanoes on Venus
The team’s study was then carried out which included a detailed analysis of the existence of volcanoes on this Earth’s twin planet.
In addition, the study also analyzes how these volcanoes are grouped, as well as how their spatial distribution compares to the planet’s geophysical properties such as crust thickness.
Since it has no oceans, the entire surface of Venus can be seen with Magellan radar images.
The results of the study later revealed that the planet Venus actually has 85,000 volcanoes, and as many as 99 percent of them are less than 5 km in diameter.
Also read: Recent Discoveries, Venus Also Has Active Volcanoes
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Illustration of the planet Venus
Taken together, the results provide the most comprehensive understanding of the planet’s volcanic nature.
“Our paper provides the most comprehensive map of all volcanic structures on Venus ever compiled,” said Dr. Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at the University of Washington in St. Louis.
“This provides researchers with an invaluable database for understanding volcanism on that planet – a major planetary process, but for Venus it’s something we know very little about, even though it’s a world the same size as ours.”
The size of a volcano on Venus
Although there are volcanoes on almost the entire surface of Venus, scientists have found only a few volcanoes with a diameter of 20-100 km.
Also read: China Prepares Mission to Planet Venus, What Will Be Learned?
Instead they saw many smaller volcanoes with a diameter of less than 5 km. So far the volcano has been ignored by researchers.
“It is the most common volcanic feature on the planet Venus, representing about 99 percent of our data set,” said Rebecca Hahn, co-author on the study.
“We looked at their distribution using different spatial statistics to find out whether the volcanoes are clustered around other structures on Venus or whether they are grouped in a certain area,” he added.
This Venus volcano study has also been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.
Also read: Interesting Facts about Venus, the Planet Called Earth’s Brother
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