For decades, we’ve known that the underground tunnels gouged out by lava, known as lava tubes, have existed here on Earth. They can also be found on the Moon and on Mars. We’ve only theorized that maybe, possibly, they also exist on Venus.
It turns out, according to a new study that just dropped, Venus does indeed have lava tubes too—and they’re friggin’ huge.
Researchers, led by Barbara De Toffoli at the University of Padova, have gathered the first compelling evidence of lava tubes on Venus. The findings, presented at the Europlanet Science Congress, indicate that these pits are located near volcanoes and align with downhill slopes.
That’s precisely how lava behaves when it flows and hollows out underground channels. They even modeled the pits and found that they matched the classic lava tube blueprint found here on Earth: molten rock draining out and leaving behind a hollow shell.
Scientists Think Venus Is Hiding Massive Tunnels Beneath Its Surface
However, Venus does it with its own twists and quirks. Traditionally, low-gravity environments, such as the Moon or Mars, create larger tubes because their walls are less likely to collapse. Earth’s are smaller because gravity crushes them.
Venus, which has Earth-like gravity, appears to have lava tubes as large or larger than those on our Moon. Weird, right? How can that be? The answer might lie in Venus’ nightmarish environment.
It would suck to live on Venus since its obscenely high temperatures and crushing atmospheric pressures would kill us instantly. Those extreme conditions, however, might actually help create larger, flatter lava tubes that suppress the kind of erosive breakdown typically seen on Earth and Mars.
Venus’ massive subsurface caves could, one day, be key to exploring or even surviving on this hellish planet. However, that possibility seems so far into the distance that it’s not even a speck on the horizon.
The post Venus Might Have Giant Underground Tunnels—Here’s What That Means appeared first on VICE.
