Venus May Have Active Volcanoes

An anonymous reader writes: The European Space Agency's Venus Express spacecraft has discovered hot lava flows on the surface of Venus, providing the best evidence yet that the planet may have active volcanoes. "[U]sing a near-infrared channel of the spacecraft's Venus Monitoring Camera (VMC) to map thermal emission from the surface through a transparent spectral window in the planet's atmosphere, an international team of planetary scientists has spotted localized changes in surface brightness between images taken only a few days apart (abstract)." Venus is fairly similar to Earth in size and composition, which suggests it has an internal heat source. One of the biggest mysteries about Venus is how that heat escapes, and volcanic activity could be the answer.

Comments

Lack of Magnetic Field

[currently_awake]

It is generally believed that the earths magnetic field protects the atmosphere from being stripped away by the solar wind. Given that Venus has no (very small) magnetic field, this explains why the planet has such a dense atmosphere. Can anyone explain why a volcanicly active planet doesn't have a magnetic field? Isn't the liquid core what generates the field?

Re:Lack of Magnetic Field

[phantomfive]

Can anyone explain why a volcanicly active planet doesn't have a magnetic field? Isn't the liquid core what generates the field?

Probably because it has a very slow rotation.

Re:Lack of Magnetic Field

[turkeydance]

+1. Venus rotates slower than i walk.

Re:Lack of Magnetic Field

[Guy From V]

It looks like Venus might have a frozen core as far as we know, at least from a few minutes of Googling and finding a couple hits mentioning that. -> http://cseligman.com/text/plan...

Re:Lack of Magnetic Field

[phantomfive]

Wikipedia has a really good article about the geology of Venus. Worth a read.

Re:Lack of Magnetic Field

[Bite The Pillow]

It is generally believed

by whom? Citation needed.

Can anyone explain

Relative to the limits of your understanding, yes. Otherwise, I suppose you should ask the European Space Agency, because it would seem that they are, as of now, the experts in such questions.

Re:Lack of Magnetic Field

[linearZ]

Venus is rotating in an oddball direction - against its orbit and accompanying tidal forces. The common explanation is that Venus got hit by something big enough to change its rotation, and may have even been what caused the atmosphere to be hosed.

Re:Lack of Magnetic Field

[paradigmsareconstruc]

Venus is the most important archetype in mythology. The stories tend to share a common theme of Venus going through a dramatic transition from an object of beauty to one of horror.

What people have generally failed to realize is that Plato believed in a recent, human-historical event in the solar system, and he attributed all of the mythological archetypes to this single event.

From Plato's Dialogues at https://books.google.com/books...

"Phaethon, the son of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his father's chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burned up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt. Now, this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving around the earth and in the heavens, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth recurring at long intervals of time"

(Notice that Plato is unwittingly describing a debris field that would regularly return to the earth after an initial catastrophe -- even though Plato has no idea what gravity or a debris field actually is ...)

And, to make sure that everybody understands the meaning of the ancient myths, he further states:

"All of these stories, and ten thousand others which are still more wonderful, have a common origin*; many of them have been lost in the lapse of ages, or exist only as fragments; *but the origin of them is what no one has told"

We can debate his intent, but what I generally find is that people are not actually aware that Plato said this at all.

Re:Lack of Magnetic Field

[AK Marc]

The oddball rotation is the same as everyone else, just so slow that when you account for it revolving around the sun, it's sunrise and sunset are the opposite of everyone else's.

The lack of magnetic field is what makes the atmosphere dense. O2 is lighter than the other compounds in the atmosphere, so it floats to the top, where the solar wind strips the upper layers of the atmosphere. So if we were able to terraform the planet, changing the atmosphere to breathable, it wouldn't be a stable transformation, and the atmosphere would return to something like it has now. All from the lack of a magentic field.

Re:Lack of Magnetic Field

[Anonymous Coward]

Some believe that a weak field may have contributed to loss of Martian atmosphere. While the lightest gases are more prone to stripping, I think we should look at what gets ADDED to a planet from slower components of the solar wind. Many believe it contributes to lunar polar ice. Solar wind includes oxygen. The hydrogen ions (usually just called protons) are pretty fast, but maybe they fit in somehow too. Research found several things in the ice associated with NLCs (noctilucent clouds) high up towards polar regions. Phrases like meteor dust or smoke are used, but I think the source is the solar wind. And it's the magnetic affinity Earth has that seasonally shifts (tilt relative to sun) affecting the solar wind influence on the jet stream and NLC formation. Asteroid bits wouldn't be seasonal, or solar-cyclic would they?? The seasonal weather dynamics seem to be influenced almost as much by the solar wind arrival distribution shifts as by changing light/heat. The control of the wind arrival is primarily magnetic and electrostatic, and the weather plasma influences are electrostatic and even particle driven. Sprites don't come FROM thunderstorms, they come from the solar-fed electrical charge that drives thunderstorms. Plasma/charge release is complex, but it can be very influential without having a geomagnetic storm. Has anyone ever measured the ratio of iron to iridium in thunderstorm rainfall? If there's enough to test, I bet the iridium level will be elevated (like solar wind etc, not Earth dust)
Why are the SXI images and videos offline right now. Tell us NOAA. Filament eruption and fast solar wind bringing more crazy weather in two or three days?? (Thunderstorms, tornados, hail, associated intense winds/rain, sprites, halos, heat bursts. Charge alone sure drove cold vortex action earlier this year, a bit like 1946 and early 90s)

June 19th was the anniversary of the 1859 133 degree Santa Barbara heat burst (unlike so-called falling-compressive sundowners, the event peaked early afternoon and was over before sundown). That was three solar rotations before the Carrington storm. I suspect a coronal hole affected the speed/focus of a filament fragment. There have been smaller heat bursts, wind shear, sand storm etc multiple times this cycle. This time 2003 was crazy in the EU last cycle.

One theory of mine is that external dense CME events that brush by one side of a planet while tightly coupled with the stream from a strong coronal hole can potentially give a planet a magnetic kick. Was the Tunguska event solar related instead of asteroid? I think so. Movement of the northern Earth pole sped up. The last 150 years or so has seen a ten percent or so accelerating Earth field decline, largely influenced by a reversal at depth in the South Atlantic magnetic anomaly. It may be a rapid onset pole reversal, but sometimes these events reverse a trend without reaching a reversal. The varying depth and non-cyclic timing of the field changes fits well with an external driver, somewhat transient in nature.

Volcanos seem a bit more active when we're getting coronal hole related action (include corotating region wavefront shock, and EUV-dark-region material like filaments. It's all less ionized, and from more-outward flux regions).
The 1883 eruption is sometimes cited as having caused the NLC sightings of that time, but I think it was mutually correlated to solar activity. I believe that solar wind downdraft bursts in the magneticly more northern north-eastern U.S. may have played a role in the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon which mostly happened in the 1880's. Occasional unexplained batches of blunt-force-trauma dead have been found in recent years. Some fish kill events that have seemed to correlate with rains are actually mutually correlated with the rain to coronal hole stream effects, it being ground currents that electrochemically cause transient shifts in aqua-eco-systems depleting oxygen through such things as changed oxidative states of nitrogen (in water and moist

Re:Lack of Magnetic Field

[Pete Venkman]

You should be a guest on Coast to Coast AM!

Re:Lack of Magnetic Field

[someone1234]

Wait a minute. Mars' thin atmosphere is also explained by the small magnetic field. How could a magnetic field be held responsible for both?
Especially, when you say the atmosphere would be stripped away by the solar wind. How dense it would be without being stripped away?

Re:Lack of Magnetic Field

[CrimsonAvenger]

It is generally believed that the earths magnetic field protects the atmosphere from being stripped away by the solar wind. Given that Venus has no (very small) magnetic field, this explains why the planet has such a dense atmosphere.

So, our magnetic field gives Earth a thick atmosphere, but Venus' lack of a magnetic field gives it an even thicker atmosphere?

I'm missing something obviously....

Re: Lack of Magnetic Field

[Anonymous Coward]

Illogical, depth makes density, along with the chemical composition. The magnetic field only contributes to the bottling and separation of the ions that are around. Being the next planet in, to the corona, they are more intensely bombarded with the magnetic flux, and the hotter ions emanating from the sun. Hey as a marshmallow on a stick. Does it cook in the field or the fire, either way it will get eaten, but...
Rotation creates a magnetic field? No, the materials, compounds, etc, do not have to be rotating to adopt a magnetic field.

Re:Lack of Magnetic Field

[inasity_rules]

Venus is the most important archetype in mythology. The stories tend to share a common theme of Venus going through a dramatic transition from an object of beauty to one of horror.

Well, that is not a subjective statement at all.

No Plate Tectonics

[Guy From V]

Since there's no evidence of any plate tectonics whatsoever like Earth, that heat from tidal forces etc. that builds and dissipates any normal magnetic field...? I'm guessing here.

Re:No Plate Tectonics

[phantomfive]

Plate tectonics might not be present on Venus because of "self repair."

Re:No Plate Tectonics

[RockDoctor]

Since there's no evidence of any plate tectonics whatsoever like Earth,

Venus doesn't seem to have the same tectonic style as Earth. At the moment. Beyond that ... I'm not going to speculate geologically. (Or even Veneraly. Or Venialy.) One thing that we don't know is how many different styles of planetary tectonics are possible (or if the number is significantly lower than the number of planets).

that heat from tidal forces etc. that builds and dissipates any normal magnetic field...?

Doesn't work : the magnetic field of Earth is generated in the core at temperatures several thousand kelvin above the temperature at which the permanent magnets which you seem to be thinking of cease to work. The Earth's magnetic field is thought to be the result of a self-exciting dynamo - which doesn't have an upper temperature limit, they operate just as well in plasmas in the many thousands of Kelvin, and in fresh neutron stars at approaching a GK (giga-Kelvin ; no, I'm not joking.).

I'm guessing here.

But you're admitting it, which is bizarre and unusual behaviour for Slashdot, and suggests that you might actually learn something.

Flows

[Rei]

They mentioned that the flow temperatures recorded in the hot pixels are colder than typical basaltic / rhyolitic flows and were speculating that they didn't catch freshly erupting material, but rather material that had a little time to cool. But I can't help but wonder.... does Venus have carbonatite flows? They're colder, and if there's anything Venus isn't short on, it's carbonic compounds...

(BTW, with those not familiar with carbonatite lava, its really weird stuff - incredibly fast-flowing and smooth (often less viscous than water), erupts looking black or dark gray like oil, doesn't (visibly) glow during the day (just a fast moving black substance), at night it has a weird maroon glow, and it oxidizes to bright white as it ages)

(Just one of many unusual types of volcano :) )

Re:Flows

[Rei]

You know, I should really learn to google things before I suggest "new" ideas ;)

Re:Flows

[Twinbee]

Here's a video of aforementioned lava: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Looks dangerous. At least with normal lava, you can walk on it if you're quick enough.

Re:The sad destruction of Slashdot

[turkeydance]

well, i agree. the target demographic ain't us.

I don't know about Venus

[DJCouchyCouch]

But I know uranus has the occasional gusher.

This proves my theory! Venus has acid clouds...

[Gravis Zero]

and some asteroids are made if baking soda!

Re:The sad destruction of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Modded down by a Dice corporate drone, no doubt. +1 and fuck you dice

So what you're saying is that Venus and Mars are

[Anonymous Coward]

All right tonight. Gotcha.

Re:The sad destruction of Slashdot

[daniel23]

I'm dismayed at how much Dice cares so little for its legacy audience. It's long time readers and the community here that allows no BS to go unchecked. Beta was so big and fucking ugly it was easy for those with soul to largely rebel and reject it. Where's Beta now? They pretty much gave up. But now with the hideous changing of comment counts and remove of the original "read more" link layout, the sign has been posted. Dice and its soulless corporate minions intend to slowly take shots here and there, little by little. Slowly they will destroy this venerable, classic old home to many on the web. And it's just a GOD DAMN SHAME.

removing the well mknown "read more" link from the bottom of the news item and instead creating a grotesquely large #-of-comments counter next to the heading is counter-intuitive and bad interface design.

I read the heading, if it anyhow interests me I read the summary and if I still feel interested I go for the "read more". This is top-down and the old design ws in harmony with it. Now I'm forced to go back again and click the link on the opposite end of the entry. This design interrupts the "natural flow" of eyeball and mouse-pointer movements and actually results in dimished clicks.

I guess some marketing droids decided to try and give /. more of an 2.0 appearance in the hope of attracting new (younger, more consume-oriented) readers and raise income froms ads. But destroying the usability of the site does not attract new users, it alienates the current users instead. If dice want to bring slashdot to the presence they should add features this site has ignored for much to long:
utf-8
https:///
ipv6

Too geekish? Think again! FB does all of those and look how many clicks they net in...

Re:Nike TN Requin 2015-TN Requin | Nike Tn Pas Che

[daniel23]

above post is an ad, feel free to mod accordinly

Re:The sad destruction of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed

Obligatory: Oh, my!

[__aaclcg7560]

So Venus has hot flashes?

Re:Hansen's Climate Model Comes From Venus

[Anonymous Coward]

DAM RIGHT MY FELLOW CONSERVAITVE (IS THERE ANYOTHER KIND) PATROT!!!!!! Next thig you no those pointy headed LIBRUL comie pinko ATHIESTS will be tellin us the world is more than 6,000 years old!

Re: The sad destruction of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

So what? Nobody wants to hold on to a population of losers and be associated with them. Soon /. will go the way of Digg: chase out the neckbeards and bring in the hip crowd. This is one of the last bastions of the nerds, and the cool kids are busting down the doors. You're finished, freaks.

Transcript of a recent meeting at Dice HQ:

[Anonymous Coward]

Boss: What the hell? Slashdot's revenue dropped again? What happened?

Middle management #1: That is strange, our beta design was supposed to increase traffic.

Middle management #2: Yeah strange right? We spent weeks making sure the beta was difficult to use as hell, then we shove it down the user's throat, how could our traffic tank after that? HOW?

Middle management #3: It can't be our fault, my 3 years old son was playing with beta before the launch and he absolutely loved it, he just learnt how to use a mouse and he was clicking around rapidly, he was so excited by the design he even clicked on the ads, if everyone did that our views and revenue should have tripled by now.

Boss: Well we got to do something, any ideas?

Middle management #1: Hmmm... well I heard there is something call 'social media', I haven't looked at it yet but it looks like people love sharing things on it, maybe we can use that?

Middle management #2: Yeah I heard about that too, my daughter said she uses it to share elmo photos.

Middle management #3: Oh I got an idea! Let's put a bunch of social media share link on the site!

Middle management #1: Sounds good to me, but if everyone is already doing it we need to do something a little different.

Middle management #2: How about... Oh I know, let's remove the most useful and popular 'read more' link, and replace it with a bunch of share links. I swear the users are so fucking stupid they won't be able to tell the difference.

Middle management #3: Yeah! Those geeks, they don't know much about computers, they are just going to click on the same place over and over again, and come back for more!

Boss: Geek site for retards? That is fucking brilliant! Let's do it!

Re:Transcript of a recent meeting at Dice HQ:

[Anonymous Coward]

how true.

Lack of moons = no vulcanism?

[bradley13]

Maybe I'm out of date here, but I thought there was general agreement that moonless planets would just quietly cool from the outside in. No plate tectonics or vulcanism, because there are no tides to stir things up.

Since TFA writes "These observations are close to the limits of the spacecraft’s capabilities and it was extremely difficult to make these detections", maybe this should be taken with a large grain of salt?

Re:Lack of moons = no vulcanism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Venus isn't a homogeneous ball of stuff and is pretty close to Sun which is enough to create some sort of tidal forces and yes, I would say that everything we discover using space probes should be taken with a (large) grain of salt. Venus having active volcanos would be cool though.

Re:Lack of moons = no vulcanism?

[daniel23]

Venus having active volcanos would be hot though.

Fixed that for you

Re: The sad destruction of Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

the cool kids are busting down the doors. You're finished, freaks.

You there! With the NSA! You're shilling on the wrong stories! Get back to work!

Venus Temperatures

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting info here:
http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html