Volcanism may be responsible for changing ancient Venus’ wet and temperate climate to the acidic planet that we know today, according to research paper by NASA. The paper notes that large-scale volcanism usually lasts tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Over time, they spew somewhere around 100,000 cubic miles of volcanic rock on the surface. For a quick reference, this amount of molten rock is enough to cover the whole of Texas half a mile deep.
“By understanding the record of large igneous provinces on Earth and Venus, we can determine if these events may have caused Venus’ present condition,” said Dr Michael J Way, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in a press statement He is also the lead author of the paper that was published earlier this year in the Planetary Science Journal.
Currently, Venus’ surface temperature averages 864 degrees Fahrenheit and has an atmosphere with pressure 90 times more than the Earth. The study also suggests that these huge volcanic eruptions and outpourings in a short span of geologic time (usually a million years) might have led to a runaway greenhouse effect and caused Venus’ transition from temperate to hot and dry.
Presently, large fields of solidified volcanic rock cover more than 80 per cent of the planet’s total surface area. Coming back to Earth, life on the planet has supposedly witnessed at least five mass extinctions since multicellular life emerged 540 million years ago. Each mass extinction is said to have wiped out more than 50 per cent of animal life on the planet.
Some studies claim that most of these extinction events happened because of the kind of eruptions that produce large-scale igneous provinces. Scientists are yet to determine why events on Earth were not large enough to cause runaway greenhouse effects like on Venus.
NASA is also preparing for a mission to Venus known as the Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry and Imaging (DAVINCI) alongside the Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography and Spectroscopy (VERITAS) mission. The latter is aimed at studying the history, origin and present state of the planet in detail. The DAVINCI mission will commence before VERITAS and will investigate the surface and interior of the planet from above in order to understand the volcanic and volatile history and how it turned into how we know it today.
Scientists hope data from both these missions will help them understand exactly how Venus made the transition from a wet and temperate place to a planet full of volcanoes. It may also help us understand how life on our Earth was altered in the past due to volcanism and what effects it will have on the future.
