Sep 21, 2010 10:58 GMT  ·  By

A new temperature model developed for Venus shows how heat gets distributed and exchanged between the planet's surface and its interior. The map could help shed light on several unanswered questions.

One of the main conclusions that experts who created the new distribution map draw from it is that the Venusian atmosphere may in fact play a cooling role on the space body's interior.

The atmosphere around Earth's sister planet is being constantly warmed by a ruthless global warming effect, which in its case is caused by the Sun.

The thick layer of chemicals enveloping the surface of the planet does not allow for heat brought by sunlight to escape back into space, which means that the atmosphere below is getting increasingly hot.

Researchers also say that the finding may help explain why the planet recorded such high levels of volcanic activity in the past. They contend that the correlation may be counter-intuitive at first.

An additional implication for the finding is that Venus may still have active volcanoes today. If that turns out to be the case, then this would be a major breakthrough.

“For some decades we’ve known that the large amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere of Venus cause the extreme heat we observe presently,” explains scientist Lena Noack.

She is based at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), in Berlin, and is also the lead author of a new study detailing the findings.

The work was presented recently in Rome, Italy, at the European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC).

“The carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are responsible for the high temperatures were blown into the atmosphere by thousands of volcanoes in the past,” Noack goes on to say.

“The permanent heat – today we measure almost 470 degrees Celsius globally on Venus – might even have been much higher in the past and, in a runaway cycle, led to even more volcanism,” the expert adds, quoted by Universe Today.

“But at a certain point this process turned on its head – the high temperatures caused a partial mobilization of the Venusians crust, leading to an efficient cooling of the mantle, and the volcanism strongly decreased,” Noack explains.

The result of all this was a lower surface temperature, that was roughly similar to the one experienced today on the surface of the planet. Surface mobilization stopped at the same time.

Noack is convinced that some volcanoes must still be active on Venus, even if none have been imaged directly by orbiters.