Subsurface Bubbling Might Be Causing Venus’s Surface to Constantly Evolve

Is Venus one big bubble?

Transcript

00:00Despite being a veritable hellscape featuring the hottest temperatures in our solar system

00:07and an atmosphere that's poisonous to humans, Venus is actually the most Earth-like planet

00:12we know of. But there has always been one big difference. Experts don't believe that Venus

00:16has plate tectonics. And while that's still technically the case, they're adding an addition.

00:20Venus might have a squishy outer crust, or lithosphere as well. Looking at old data

00:25from the Magellan orbiter, scientists now say that our yellow neighbor likely has a much thinner

00:29crust than previously calculated. After examining these images closer, they realize that what they

00:34initially thought were impact craters are actually coronae, rings of crust that are pushed up by

00:38massive amounts of molten rock underneath, until they dome and eventually collapse in on themselves.

00:43This sort of turned a lot of what experts thought they knew about Venus on its head,

00:46as they didn't believe it was all that active. However, some 80% of the planet's surface is

00:51covered in volcanic rock, and it had to be coming from somewhere. And it turns out it could be from

00:55an ever-shifting surface caused by subterranean bubbling, with their researchers writing, quote,

00:59while Venus doesn't have Earth-style tectonics, these regions of thin lithosphere appear to be

01:04allowing significant amounts of heat to escape, similar to areas where new tectonic plates form

01:08on Earth's seafloor.