Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

suppose, even possible—although there is no evidence either way—that Olympus Mons, the largest volcano we know about for certain in the Solar System, will be active again. Volcanologists, a patient sort, would doubtless welcome the event.

In 1990–93 the Magellan spacecraft returned surprising radar data about the landforms of Venus. Cartographers prepared maps of almost the entire planet, with fine detail down to about 100 meters, the goal-line-to-goal-line distance in an American football stadium. More data were radioed home by Magellan than by all other planetary missions combined. Since much of the ocean floor remains unexplored (except perhaps for still-classified data acquired by the U.S. and Soviet navies), we may know more about the surface topography of Venus than about any other planet, Earth included. Much of the geology of Venus is unlike anything seen on Earth or anywhere else. Planetary geologists have given these landforms names, but that doesn’t mean we fully understand how they’re formed.

Because the surface temperature of Venus is almost 470°C (900°F), the rocks there are much closer to their melting points than are those at the surface of the Earth. Rocks begin to soften and flow at much shallower depths on Venus than on Earth. This is very likely the reason that many geological features on Venus seem to be plastic and deformed.

The planet is covered by volcanic plains and highland plateaus. The geological constructs include volcanic cones, probable shield volcanos, and calderas. There are many places where we can see that lava has erupted in vast floods. Some plains features ranging to over 200 kilometers in size are playfully called “ticks” and “arachnoids” (which translates roughly as “spiderlike things”)—because they are circular depressions surrounded by concentric rings, while long, spindly surface cracks extend radially out from the center. Odd, flat “pancake domes”—a geological feature unknown on Earth, but probably a kind of volcano—are perhaps formed by thick, viscous lava slowly flowing uniformly in all directions. There are many examples of more irregular lava flows. Curious ring structures called “coronae” range up to some 2,000 kilometers across. The distinctive lava flows on stifling hot Venus offer up a rich menu of geological mysteries.

The most unexpected and peculiar features are the sinuous channels—with meanders and oxbows, looking just like river valleys on Earth. The longest are longer than the greatest rivers on Earth. But it is much too hot for liquid water on Venus. And we can tell from the absence of small impact craters that the atmosphere has been this thick, driving as great a greenhouse effect, for as long as the present surface has been in existence. (If it had been much thinner, intermediate-sized asteroids would not have burned up on entry into the atmosphere, but would have survived to excavate craters as they impact this planet’s surface.) Lava flowing downhill does make sinuous channels (sometimes under the ground, followed by collapse of the roof of the channel). But even at the temperatures of Venus, the lavas radiate heat, cool, slow, congeal, and stop. The magma freezes solid. Lava channels cannot go even 10 percent of the length of the long Venus channels before they solidify. Some planetary geologists think there must be a special thin, watery, inviscid lava generated on Venus. But this is a speculation supported by no other data, and a confession of our ignorance.

The thick atmosphere moves sluggishly; because it’s so dense, though, it’s very good at lifting and moving fine particles. There are wind streaks on Venus, largely emanating from impact craters, in which the prevailing winds have scoured piles of sand and dust and provided a sort of weather vane imprinted on the surface. Here and there we seem to see fields of sand dunes, and provinces where wind erosion has sculpted volcanic landforms. These aeolian processes take place in slow motion, as if at the bottom of the sea. The winds are feeble at the surface of Venus. It may take only a soft gust to raise a cloud of fine particles, but in that stifling inferno a gust is hard to come by.

There are many impact craters on Venus, but nothing like the number on the Moon or Mars. Craters smaller than a few across are oddly missing. The reason is understood: Small asteroids and comets are broken up on entry into the dense Venus atmosphere before they can hit the surface. The observed cutoff in crater size corresponds very well to the present density of the atmosphere of Venus. Certain irregular splotches seen on the Magellan images are thought to be the remains of impactors that broke up in the thick air before they could gouge out a crater.

Most of the impact craters are remarkably pristine and well preserved; only a few percent of them have been engulfed by subsequent lava flows. The surface of Venus as revealed by Magellan isvery young. There are so few impact craters that everything older than about 500 million years[24] must have been eradicated—on a planet almost certainly 4.5 billion years old. There is only one plausible erosive agent adequate for what we see: vulcanism. All over the planet craters, mountains, and other geological features have been inundated by seas of lava that once welled up from the inside, flowed far, and froze.

After examining so young a surface covered with congealed magma, you might wonder if there are any active volcanos left. None has been found for certain, but there are a few—for example, one called Maat Mons—that appear to be surrounded by fresh lava and which may indeed still be churning and belching. There is some evidence that the abundance of sulfur compounds in the high atmosphere varies with time, as if volcanos at the surface were episodically injecting these materials into the atmosphere. When the volcanos are quiescent, the sulfur compounds simply fall out of the air. There’s also disputed evidence of lightning playing around the mountaintops of Venus, as sometimes happens on active volcanos on Earth. But we do not know for certain whether there is ongoing vulcanism on Venus. That’s a matter for future missions.

Some scientists believe that until about 500 million years ago the Venus surface was almost entirely devoid of landforms. Streams and oceans of molten rock were relentlessly pouring out of the interior, filling in and covering over any relief that had managed to form. Had you plummeted down through the clouds in that long-ago time, the surface would have been nearly uniform and featureless. At night the landscape would have been hellishly glowing from the red heat of molten lava. In this view, the great internal heat engine of Venus, which supplied copious amounts of magma to the surface until about 500 million years ago, has now turned off. The planetary heat engine has finally run down.

In another provocative theoretical model, this one by the geophysicist Donald Turcotte, Venus has plate tectonics like the Earth’s but it turns off and on. Right now, he proposes, the plate tectonics are off; “continents” do not move along the surface, do not crash into one another, do not thereby raise mountain ranges, and are not later subducted into the deep interior. After hundreds of millions of years of quiescence, though, plate tectonics always breaks out and surface features are flooded by lava, destroyed by mountain building, subducted, and otherwise obliterated. The last such breakout ended about 500 million years ago, Turcotte suggests, and everything has been quiet since. However, the presence of coronae may signify—on timescales that are geologically in the near future— that massive changes on the surface of Venus are about to break out again.

Even more unexpected than the great Martian volcanos or the magma-flooded surface of Venus is what awaited us when the Voyager 1 spacecraft encountered lo, the innermost of the four large Galilean moons of Jupiter, in March 1979. There we found a strange, small, multihued world positively awash in volcanos. As we watched in astonishment, eight active plumes poured gas and fine particles up into the sky. The largest, now called Pele—after the Hawaiian volcano goddess—projected a fountain of material 250 kilometers into space, higher above the surface of Io than some astronauts have ventured above the Earth. By the time Voyager 2 arrived at Io, four months later, Pele had turned itself off, although six of the other plumes were still active, at least one new plume had been discovered, and another caldera, named Surt, had changed its color dramatically.

The colors of Io, even though exaggerated in NASA’s color-enhanced images, are like none elsewhere in the Solar System. The currently favored explanation is that the Ionian volcanos are driven not by upwelling molten rock, as on the Earth, the Moon, Venus, and Mars, but by upwelling sulfur dioxide and molten sulfur. The surface is covered with volcanic mountains, volcanic calderas, vents, and lakes of molten sulfur. Various forms and compounds of sulfur have been detected on the surface of Io and in nearby space—the volcanos blow some of the sulfur off Io altogether.[25] These findings have suggested to some an underground sea of liquid sulfur that issues to the surface at points of weakness, generates a shallow volcanic mound, trickles downhill, and freezes, its final color determined by its temperature on eruption.

On the Moon or Mars, you can find many places that have changed little in a billion years. On Io, in a century, much of the surface should be reflooded, filled in or washed away by new volcanic flows. Maps of Io will then quickly become obsolete, and cartography of Io will have become a growth industry.