Venus Reveals a Hidden Subsurface World: Lava Tubes Bigger Than Earth’s Are Real
The hot, hostile skies of Venus hide a deep, cooler secret beneath: massive lava tubes that stretch far beyond anything we’ve seen on Earth. New evidence confirms that Venus hosts underground channels formed by ancient lava flows, and their scale could rival, or even exceed, the Moon’s. This discovery reshapes what we thought was possible on our planetary neighbor and hints at a subterranean landscape hidden beneath Venus’s crushing pressure and heat.
In This Article:
The Gravity Rule That Venus Breaks: Why Size Doesn’t Match Expectation
For years, scientists noted a simple pattern: lava tubes tend to be larger where gravity is weaker. Earth tubes are smaller, Moon tubes are larger, and Mars tubes are even bigger. Venus, despite having Earth-like mass and gravity, throws a wrench into this rule with very large tube volumes. University of Padova researcher Barbara De Toffoli highlighted the surprise at the Europlanet Science Congress: “Earth lava tubes have smaller volumes, Mars tubes have slightly bigger volumes, and then the Moon’s tubes have even bigger volumes. And then there’s Venus, completely disrupting this trend, displaying very, very big tube volumes.” This means there could be fundamental processes at work on Venus that we don’t fully understand yet.
First Compelling Evidence: Venus Has Real Lava Tubes, Not Just Pits
In a new paper, De Toffoli and colleagues present what they describe as the first compelling evidence for lava tubes on Venus. They show that the pits aren’t random: they cluster near large volcanoes and align with the slope of the terrain, consistent with lava flowing on an incline. By modeling the cavities, they demonstrate a formation scenario where the upper layer of a lava flow solidifies while the underlying molten lava drains away, leaving a hollow conduit.
Size, Pressure, and Possibilities: What These Tubes Could Mean for Venus
Venus’s extreme heat and high pressure might allow lava tubes to grow to enormous sizes, even more impressive than their Moon-born counterparts. The researchers argue that Venus could host some of the most extensive subsurface cavities in the solar system, a finding that could illuminate Venus’s thermal and tectonic evolution and shed light on its past and present conditions.
A Roadmap for Discovery: EnVision’s Subsurface Radar Sounder
To confirm and map these hidden caverns, scientists are calling on the European Space Agency’s EnVision mission to focus its Subsurface Radar Sounder (SRS) instrument on Venus. EnVision is scheduled to launch in late 2031 to investigate why Earth’s neighbor is so different from Earth and the Moon. The team’s findings set the stage for SRS to take a closer look at Venus’s interior, potentially rewriting our picture of the planet.
