Speaker 1: Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos
Speaker 1: with our soothing Bedtime Astronomie podcast. Each episode offers a
Speaker 1: gentle journey through the stars, planets, and beyond, perfect for
Speaker 1: unwinding after a long day. Let's travel through the mysteries
Speaker 1: of the universe as you drift off into a peaceful
Speaker 1: slumber under the night sky.
Speaker 2: I want you to close your eyes for a second. Well,
Speaker 2: don't close them if you're driving, obviously, but picture the
Speaker 2: absolute worst place you can possibly imagine. Okay, and I
Speaker 2: don't mean the DMV on a Friday afternoon, and I
Speaker 2: don't mean a crowded subway car where the ac has broken.
Speaker 2: I mean a place where the environment itself is actively
Speaker 2: trying to kill you in about four different ways. Simultaneously.
Speaker 3: You're painting a lovely picture.
Speaker 2: I try my dest but seriously, imagine a world where
Speaker 2: the air pressure is so heavy it would crush a
Speaker 2: nuclear submarine like an empty soda can. The temperature is
Speaker 2: hot enough to melt lead, literally, a pool of lead
Speaker 2: would be a liquid puddle on the ground.
Speaker 3: Four hundred and seventy five degrees celsius, just searing.
Speaker 2: And to top it off. The clouds aren't made of
Speaker 2: water vapor, they are made of concentrated sulfuric acid.
Speaker 3: You are describing, of course, Earth's so called evil.
Speaker 2: Twin Venus, the planet that has been the graveyard of
Speaker 2: so many robotic explorers.
Speaker 3: It is a fortress, that is the best way to
Speaker 3: describe it. Historically, when we send landers there, like the
Speaker 3: Soviet venera probes back in the day, they survive for
Speaker 3: maybe an hour maybe two, before the electronics fry or
Speaker 3: the whole buckles just get cooked and crushed instantly. It
Speaker 3: is a world that keeps its secrets very very well
Speaker 3: hidden under those thick, toxic clouds.
Speaker 2: Exactly. It's the ultimate look but don't touch scenario. But today, Monday,
Speaker 2: February nine, twenty twenty six, we are not just looking
Speaker 2: at the fortress walls. We are cracking them open because
Speaker 2: there is breaking news today that fundamentally shifts our understanding
Speaker 2: of this healthscape.
Speaker 3: It really does. This is one of those days when
Speaker 3: the textbooks get a little update.
Speaker 2: Researchers from the University of Trento have confirmed the first
Speaker 2: direct physical evidence of a subsurface lava tube, essentially a
Speaker 2: massive cave on Venus.
Speaker 3: And we need to be clear about the magnitude of this.
Speaker 3: We aren't talking about a suspicion. We aren't talking about
Speaker 3: a mathematical model that suggests maybe there are caves.
Speaker 2: This isn't a we think, No, we.
Speaker 3: Are talking about hard evidence, a direct observation.
Speaker 2: This is the difference between guessing your neighbor has a
Speaker 2: basement and actually seeing the stairs leading down into.
Speaker 3: The dark precisely, and finding this on Venus, of all places. Yea,
Speaker 3: the steaks are huge. We have seen lava tubes on Mars,
Speaker 3: we have seen them on the Moon. They are fascinating
Speaker 3: there right, But finding one on Venus hidden beneath that
Speaker 3: opaque atmosphere validates decades of geological theory.
Speaker 2: So we are basing this entire deep dive on the
Speaker 2: primary source material. A brand new paper published today in
Speaker 2: Nature Communications titled Radar based Observation of a Lava Tube
Speaker 2: on Venus. It's led by Lorenzo Bruzon and his team
Speaker 2: at the University of Trento.
Speaker 3: A fantastic piece of research. It is incredibly detailed.
Speaker 2: And our mission for this deep dive is to really
Speaker 2: unpack this discovery. We aren't just talking about a hole
Speaker 2: in the ground Now we need to talk about the
Speaker 2: detective story. How they found this using data that is
Speaker 2: technically older than I am. We need to talk about
Speaker 2: the sheer scale of this thing, because when I read
Speaker 2: the numbers, my jaw hit the floor. This isn't a
Speaker 2: crawl space, it's a tunnel large enough to fit a
Speaker 2: city block.
Speaker 3: It puts our terrestrial case to shame utterly.
Speaker 2: And finally, we're going to discuss what this tells us
Speaker 2: about the volcanic history of our planetary neighbor. So buckle up,
Speaker 2: we are going beneath.
Speaker 3: The clouds into the dark.
Speaker 2: Let's start with the detective story. Because usually when we
Speaker 2: get breaking space news in twenty twenty six, it's from
Speaker 2: a flashy new robot. Right, We're used to the James
Speaker 2: Webb Space Telescope beaming back higher images of galaxies, or
Speaker 2: a rover on Mars drilling a new hole.
Speaker 3: Correct, we are accustomed to fresh data, new photons, hitting
Speaker 3: a new sensor.
Speaker 2: But that is not what happened here. This discovery is
Speaker 2: a bit of a ghost story.
Speaker 3: It is to understand why you have to understand the
Speaker 3: fundamental problem with exploring Venus. If you orbit Mars, you
Speaker 3: can bring a nice optical camera basically a really expensive
Speaker 3: DSLR and take a photograph.
Speaker 2: Of the surface and you see the ground.
Speaker 3: You can see the red rocks, the dust devils, the
Speaker 3: crater rims. It's intuitive. We understand pictures.
Speaker 2: But if you orbit Venus and take a photo, you.
Speaker 3: See a cue ball. You see a bright, featureless white sphere.
Speaker 3: Maybe if you swirls in the upper atmosphere, but that's it.
Speaker 2: Because of the clouds.
Speaker 3: The atmosphere is incredibly thick and opaque. Visible light just
Speaker 3: bounces off the top of the cloud deck. You cannot
Speaker 3: see the ground. So if you want to map the
Speaker 3: surface of Venus, you cannot use a camera. You have
Speaker 3: to use radar.
Speaker 2: You have to scream at the planet and listen to
Speaker 2: the echo.
Speaker 3: That is a very aggressive way to put it, but yes, essentially,
Speaker 3: you bounce radio waves off the surface and measure how
Speaker 3: they come back to you, the timing, the strength that
Speaker 3: builds a picture.
Speaker 2: And that brings us to the time capsule aspect of
Speaker 2: today's news. The data that the University of Trento team
Speaker 2: used it didn't come from a ship currently orbiting Venus. No, no,
Speaker 2: it came from NASA's Magellan.
Speaker 3: Spacecraft, which is a name that should trigger some nostalgia
Speaker 3: for some of our listeners.
Speaker 2: Seriously, Magellan launched in nineteen eighty nine. It was deployed
Speaker 2: from the Space Shuttle Atlantis. I mean we're talking about
Speaker 2: a different era of space exploration, pre Internet.
Speaker 3: Practically, it mapped Venus between nineteen ninety and nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 2: Okay, nineteen ninety to nineteen ninety two, and then.
Speaker 3: It was intentionally steered into the atmosphere and burned up
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 2: So let's pause and appreciate this. The spacecraft has been
Speaker 2: vaporized for over thirty years.
Speaker 3: It's gone completely gone.
Speaker 2: But we are still making headline discoveries in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: six from the data it's sent back when the Internet
Speaker 2: was barely a concept.
Speaker 3: It is a testament to the quality of that mission.
Speaker 3: Magellan was a workhorse, mapped about ninety eight percent of
Speaker 3: the Venusian surface with its radar. But it also highlights
Speaker 3: a very important concept in modern science data archaeology.
Speaker 2: Data archaeology. I love that term. It makes me picture
Speaker 2: Indiana Jones, but instead of a whip, he has a hard.
Speaker 3: Drive, ideally with fewer movie traps. But the concept is sound.
Speaker 3: The pixels, so to speak, the raw radar returns were
Speaker 3: always there. They were sitting in NASA's Planetary Data System archives,
Speaker 3: just waiting, just waiting. But in nineteen ninety two, we
Speaker 3: didn't have the processing power we had today. We didn't
Speaker 3: have the sophisticated algorithms to filter out noise and enhance
Speaker 3: the signal. It was cutting edge for its time, but
Speaker 3: by our standards, it's.
Speaker 2: Like trying to play a modern video game on a
Speaker 2: computer from nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 3: You just can't exactly. The hardware and software couldn't do
Speaker 3: what we can do now.
Speaker 2: So the picture didn't change, but our glasses got better.
Speaker 3: That's a perfect analogy. The data is a fixed asset,
Speaker 3: it doesn't rot, but our ability to understand it evolves.
Speaker 3: Lorenzo Bruzon and his team at the Remote Sensing Laboratory
Speaker 3: that's the University of Trento. They didn't just casually scroll
Speaker 3: through the old images.
Speaker 2: No, this wasn't an accident.
Speaker 3: No, they developed a specific new imaging technique. They created
Speaker 3: new tools to look at this old information.
Speaker 2: They were looking for something specific, right.
Speaker 3: They weren't just browsing, No, this was a targeted hunt.
Speaker 3: Their goal, as stated in the paper, was to detect
Speaker 3: and characterize underground conduits.
Speaker 2: Conduits a fancy geological word for tunnels.
Speaker 3: In this context, Yes, lavitat. They were looking for specific
Speaker 3: surface anomalies that would hint at a hollow space beneath
Speaker 3: the rock.
Speaker 2: So they are combing through this massive noisy data set
Speaker 2: from the early nineties, applying these new algorithms to clean
Speaker 2: it up, to filter out the static.
Speaker 3: Exactly, and they focused their attention on a region called
Speaker 3: nix Mons. Nex Mons a fitting name for a dark discovery.
Speaker 2: Why is that? What does it mean?
Speaker 3: Nix is the Greek goddess of the night.
Speaker 2: Spooky like it, so a mountain of night.
Speaker 3: Nix Mons is a large vulcanic rise in the northern
Speaker 3: hemisphere of Venus. It's a place that has fascinated geologists
Speaker 3: for a while because it shows signs of heavy volcanic activity,
Speaker 3: lots of lava flows, lots of fractures. It's a geologically
Speaker 3: interesting place.
Speaker 2: So if you're going to find a giant lava tube,
Speaker 2: a big volcano is a good place to start looking,
Speaker 2: the best place. Okay, so they are looking at nix
Speaker 2: Bond's But here is the part that confuses people, and
Speaker 2: it confused me at first. You said, Magellan used radar
Speaker 2: to map the surface.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: Radar bounces off to ground. It doesn't go through the ground.
Speaker 3: That is correct. At least Magellan's specific radar frequency could
Speaker 3: not penetrate deep into the rock. It just tells you
Speaker 3: what the surface looks like. It's roughness, it's slope.
Speaker 2: So if there is a tunnel underground and the roof
Speaker 2: is solid rock, Magellan would just see a flat plane.
Speaker 2: It wouldn't see the tunnel exactly.
Speaker 3: You would fly right over it and never know it
Speaker 3: was there.
Speaker 2: So how did they find it?
Speaker 3: What was the clue they had to look for? The
Speaker 3: smoking gun? In planetary geology, when you were hunting for
Speaker 3: lava tubes, you're actually hunting for skylights.
Speaker 2: A skylight oka that when I hear skylight, I think
Speaker 2: of a nice window in a kitchen to let some
Speaker 2: sun in.
Speaker 3: Not quite though. The principle of letting light in is similar,
Speaker 3: or in this case, letting radar in.
Speaker 2: Got it.
Speaker 3: Think about how a lava tube forms. You have a
Speaker 3: river of lava, the top cools and hardens into a
Speaker 3: roof because it's exposed to the air. The lava inside
Speaker 3: keeps flowing and drains away, leaving a long hollow tunnel like.
Speaker 2: A subway tunnel, but made of basalt.
Speaker 3: Right now, imagine a million years pass, maybe a meteor
Speaker 3: hits the area, maybe a venus quake shakes the ground,
Speaker 3: or maybe gravity just wins and a section of that
Speaker 3: roof becomes unstable.
Speaker 2: It caves in.
Speaker 3: It caves in, and that collapse creates a pit on
Speaker 3: the surface, a hole. That pit is the skylight. It
Speaker 3: connects the surface world to the underworld.
Speaker 2: So if you spot the hole, you can infer the
Speaker 2: room below it.
Speaker 3: It's the one.
Speaker 2: You can't see the tunnel directly with Magellan's radar, but
Speaker 2: you can see where the roof failed.
Speaker 3: That is the logic. And in the Magellan data, specifically
Speaker 3: in the next Mons region, they found a series of
Speaker 3: these features called pit chains, but they focused on one
Speaker 3: specific feature. It's marked as a in the study figures
Speaker 3: that looked exactly like a skylight into a massive void.
Speaker 2: But here is the tricky part. I've seen radar images.
Speaker 2: They are weird. They don't look like normal photos.
Speaker 3: They're not intuitive.
Speaker 2: No bright means rough, dark means smooth.
Speaker 3: It's all backwards. How can they tell it's a deep
Speaker 3: hole and not just a shallow dish or a regular
Speaker 3: impact crater.
Speaker 2: It is all about the shadows. This is where the
Speaker 2: detective work gets mathematical. In the study, they point out
Speaker 2: a white arrow in the imagery. That arrow indicates the
Speaker 2: direction the radar illumination is coming from. Magellan wasn't directly overhead.
Speaker 2: It's radar beam hit the surface at an angle.
Speaker 3: The direction the spacecraft was shining its radio flashlight exactly.
Speaker 2: Now, imagine a deep vertical shaft. If you shine a
Speaker 2: flashlight across the top of it from the side, the
Speaker 2: far wall is going to catch the light and be
Speaker 2: very bright in your radar image.
Speaker 3: Okay, it reflects the signal right back. But the near
Speaker 3: the ring closest to you is going to cast a
Speaker 3: shadow down into the hole, and the floor of the
Speaker 3: pit will be in that shadow. It will look dark.
Speaker 2: Ah, okay, I'm visualizing that.
Speaker 3: By analyzing how that shadow falls and specifically measuring the
Speaker 3: length and intensity of the shadow within the pit, you
Speaker 3: can calculate geometry. You can figure out that this isn't
Speaker 3: a bowl shape like a crater. A crater has slope sides.
Speaker 2: Right, the shadow would look different.
Speaker 3: It looked very different. The only model that fit the
Speaker 3: data they were seeing was a deep, steep walled shaft.
Speaker 2: It's amazing what you can do with shadows. It feels
Speaker 2: very Sherlock Holmes. The shadow is three pixels long, Watson.
Speaker 2: Therefore the hole is four hundred meters deep.
Speaker 3: It is essentially trigonometry in physics. Yeah, but yes, it
Speaker 3: is detective work. They model the radar signals against different shapes,
Speaker 3: a shallow crater, a deep pit, a cone, and the
Speaker 3: only model that fit the data from Magellan was a
Speaker 3: deep vertical skylight connecting to a subsurface void.
Speaker 2: And that void. Well, that's the part that really blew
Speaker 2: my mind when I was reading the briefing, because we
Speaker 2: are talking about a little cross space.
Speaker 3: No, we're not.
Speaker 2: We really need to get into the numbers here. The
Speaker 2: scale of this thing is hard to wrap your head around.
Speaker 3: It is massive, genuinely geologically massive.
Speaker 2: Start with the diameter. How wide is this tube?
Speaker 3: The study estimates that diameter is approximately one kilometer one
Speaker 3: one kilometer, yes, one thousand meters.
Speaker 2: Okay, stop and visualize that. Seriously, A kilometer is a
Speaker 2: distinct distance. If you are driving on a highway, a
Speaker 2: kilometer takes a moment to pass. Imagine a tunnel that wide.
Speaker 2: You could fit the Burje Khalifa inside its sideways with
Speaker 2: room to spare.
Speaker 3: It is vastly larger than terrestrial lava tubes. It's not
Speaker 3: even in the same ballpark. Right.
Speaker 2: I've been to lava tubes in Hawaii, that Casumora Cave.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. It's a fantastic experience, but it's human scale.
Speaker 2: I mean, some parts are big, like a subway station,
Speaker 2: but some parts you have to duck.
Speaker 3: Exactly. On Earth, a large lava tube might be ten twenty,
Speaker 3: maybe thirty meters wide.
Speaker 2: Thirty meters would be a big one, and.
Speaker 3: Finding one that is one hundred meters wide would be
Speaker 3: a headline, a major discovery. This Venusian structure is on
Speaker 3: a completely different scale. It is an order of magnitude larger.
Speaker 2: And it's not just the width, it's the protection. How
Speaker 2: thick is the roof.
Speaker 3: Right, the roof thickness. They estimated that there is at
Speaker 3: least one hundred and fifty meters of solid rock shielding
Speaker 3: this void from the surface.
Speaker 2: That's a fifty story building worth of rock above your head,
Speaker 2: just solid basalt, and.
Speaker 3: The void itself. The empty space below that roof is
Speaker 3: at least three hundred and seventy five meters.
Speaker 2: Deep, So from the floor of the tube to the
Speaker 2: ceiling is three hundred and seventy five meters at a minimum.
Speaker 3: That's what they can model from the shadows.
Speaker 2: It's cavernous. It's practically an underground canyon. It's a cathedral geology.
Speaker 3: And while the direct observation is limited to the area
Speaker 3: around the skylight, because that's where we can see the shadow,
Speaker 3: the morphology of the terrain suggests the tube extends for
Speaker 3: a long way. You can see these chains of pits,
Speaker 3: these other potential collapses.
Speaker 2: So this one skylight is just one window into a
Speaker 2: whole subway system, a huge one. How long do they
Speaker 2: think it is?
Speaker 3: They estimate this specific segment based on this rounding geology,
Speaker 3: is at least forty five kilometers long.
Speaker 2: A forty five kilometer tunnel one kilumeter wide, buried under
Speaker 2: a mountain of rock. That is some serious infrastructure.
Speaker 3: The researchers use the term pyroduct.
Speaker 2: Pyroduct that sounds like a heavy metal band.
Speaker 3: It is the formal scientific term pyro meaning fire duct,
Speaker 3: meaning channel, a channel of fire.
Speaker 2: The pyroducks of nix Mon's I'd buy that album.
Speaker 3: It does have a certain ring to it, but it
Speaker 3: describes exactly what this was. It was a massive plumbing
Speaker 3: system for magma on a scale we just don't have
Speaker 3: on Earth.
Speaker 2: But this brings up the question of why why is
Speaker 2: everything on Venus so extra?
Speaker 3: It's a good question.
Speaker 2: Why is the atmosphere so thick, the temperature so hot,
Speaker 2: and now the cave's so enormous? Why is this tube
Speaker 2: so much bigger than what we see on Earth or
Speaker 2: even Mars?
Speaker 3: Because we share a lot of DNA with Venus planet wise, we.
Speaker 2: Do, and this is where we get into the fascinating
Speaker 2: field of comparative planetology. It shows how the unique environment
Speaker 2: of a planet dictates its geology. It's not just about
Speaker 2: the rock, it's about the air and the gravity too.
Speaker 3: We know lava tubes aren't unique to Venus, right, We've
Speaker 3: seen them elsewhere correct, As we said, We see them
Speaker 3: on Earth, usually in places with the saltic lava flows
Speaker 3: like Hawaii, Iceland, the Canary Islands. We see them on Mars.
Speaker 3: We've seen skylights on the slopes of the giant Martian
Speaker 3: volcanoes like Rga Monds and the moon, and we see
Speaker 3: them on the Moon. They're called sinuous rills. So the
Speaker 3: recipe is the same lava flows, top cools, tube forms.
Speaker 2: The mechanism is universal.
Speaker 3: The mechanism is universal, but the ingredients, the environmental variables
Speaker 3: are different. And the expert analysis in the paper points
Speaker 3: to two main factors driving this massive scale on Venus.
Speaker 2: Okay, hit me with them. What's the first?
Speaker 3: One factor? One gravity?
Speaker 2: Venus is slightly smaller than Earth, right.
Speaker 3: Very slightly. It's gravity is about ninety percent of Earth's. Now,
Speaker 3: that might not sound like a huge difference to you
Speaker 3: or me. If you weigh one hundred pounds on Earth,
Speaker 3: you'd weigh ninety on Venus.
Speaker 2: Nice instant diet.
Speaker 3: Sure, But when we are talking about millions of tons
Speaker 3: of molten rock flowing across a landscape, that ten percent
Speaker 3: difference in gravity matters. Lower gravity allows lava flows to
Speaker 3: be somewhat taller and wider because the fluid isn't being
Speaker 3: pulled down quite as hard. The rock itself can support
Speaker 3: larger structures that they're collapsing under its own weight.
Speaker 2: So the roof can be wider without caving in.
Speaker 3: Precisely, we see this effect on the Moon, where gravity
Speaker 3: is very low one sixth the Earth's. The tubes there
Speaker 3: are huge hundreds of meters wide, but.
Speaker 2: Venus's gravity is pretty close to Earth's. That ten percent
Speaker 2: can't be the only reason we're going from a thirty
Speaker 2: meter tube to a one thousand meters two.
Speaker 3: You are right, gravity helps, but it's not the main driver.
Speaker 3: The main driver is likely factor too, the atmosphere. This soup,
Speaker 3: the soup the pressure cooker. Venus has an incredibly dense
Speaker 3: atmosphere ninety times the pressure of Earth, and it is hot,
Speaker 3: surface temperatures around four hundred and seventy five degrees celsius.
Speaker 2: Now, intuition tells me that if it's hot outside, the
Speaker 2: lava wouldn't cool as fast. Like if I pour coffee
Speaker 2: in asuna, it stays hot longer than in.
Speaker 3: A free That is true for the liquid itself, but
Speaker 3: the paper argues that the dense atmosphere and the specific
Speaker 3: conditions favor the rapid creation of a thick, insulating crust
Speaker 3: immediately after the lava leaves the vent.
Speaker 2: Wait, so the crust forms faster. That feels counterintuitive.
Speaker 3: It forms a more robust crust. Think of the lava
Speaker 3: flow emerging onto the surface. The heavy, dense atmosphere pushes
Speaker 3: against it from all sides. The interaction between the hot
Speaker 3: lava and this incredibly dense hot gas creates a coherent
Speaker 3: lid very.
Speaker 2: Quickly, like putting a heavy lid on a pot.
Speaker 3: Exactly, and rock is a great insulator. Once that thick
Speaker 3: crust forms, it acts as a thermal blanket. It traps
Speaker 3: the heat inside the flow incredibly efficiently.
Speaker 2: So it becomes a super thermos The outside cools just
Speaker 2: enough to make a shell, and the inside stays molten.
Speaker 3: Precisely a natural geological pipeline. Because that crust forms so
Speaker 3: effectively and creates such good insulation, the lava inside stays
Speaker 3: hot and liquid for a very very long time. This
Speaker 3: will was Lasa to flow for huge distances hundreds of
Speaker 3: kilometers without freezing up.
Speaker 2: And because it keeps flowing for so long and stays
Speaker 2: so hot.
Speaker 3: It creates a process called thermal erosion. The lava is
Speaker 3: so hot and flows for so long that it actually
Speaker 3: melts the ground beneath it. It carves its way down into
Speaker 3: the bedrock.
Speaker 2: It digs its own grave or its own tunnel.
Speaker 3: I guess, it deepens and widens the channel over time.
Speaker 3: On Earth, lava usually cools and solidifies before it can
Speaker 3: carve a canyon like that. The flows are shorter on Venus.
Speaker 3: The flow just keeps going, eating the rock, expanding the
Speaker 3: tube until you get these monster.
Speaker 2: Dimensions one kilometer wide.
Speaker 3: The study notes that this Venusian tube falls at the
Speaker 3: upper end of what scientists have predicted and even observed
Speaker 3: on the Moon. It creates a scale of volcanism that
Speaker 3: is distinct to the Venusian environment. It's a product of
Speaker 3: its unique extreme world.
Speaker 2: It really paints a picture of a planet that was,
Speaker 2: and maybe still is violently active. This isn't just a
Speaker 2: little trickle of lava. This is a planetary artery.
Speaker 3: It does and this discovery validates a lot of theory.
Speaker 3: You know, Lorenzo Bruso mentioned in the press release that
Speaker 3: for years these theories were just hypotheses. We think there
Speaker 3: were tubes. The math says there should be tubes.
Speaker 2: But scientists hate guessing they do.
Speaker 3: They prefer knowing and finding physical evidence like this. It's everything.
Speaker 3: Moving from speculation to observation is the gold standard in science.
Speaker 2: It's the difference between suspecting your neighbor have a pool
Speaker 2: because you hear splashing and actually seeing the diving board
Speaker 2: over the fence.
Speaker 3: Precisely, and Bruzon put it well. This discovery contributes to
Speaker 3: a deeper understanding of the processes that have shaped Venus's evolution.
Speaker 3: It's a piece of the puzzle of how Venus ended
Speaker 3: up the way it is, why it took such a
Speaker 3: different path from Earth.
Speaker 2: So we found the skylight, We know the tube is huge,
Speaker 2: we know how it formed. What happens next because we
Speaker 2: can't just send a sperlinker down there with a rope
Speaker 2: and a headlamp.
Speaker 3: Not unless that spilunker is made of titanium and doesn't
Speaker 3: mind nine hundred degree fahrenheit heat.
Speaker 2: Fair point, But this discovery feels like a targeting beacon.
Speaker 3: It is. It is basically a giant neon sign saying
Speaker 3: look here. And the timing is perfect because we're entering
Speaker 3: a new golden age of Venus exploration.
Speaker 2: We have some missions on the books, don't We feel
Speaker 2: like Venus is finally getting some attention again.
Speaker 3: We do. For a long time, Venus was the neglected
Speaker 3: sibling everyone wanted to go to Mars, but that is changing.
Speaker 3: We have major missions coming up in the early twenty
Speaker 3: thirties esays Envision and NASA's Veritas, and.
Speaker 2: A discovery like this just makes those missions even more exciting.
Speaker 3: Much more it gives them a prime target. These missions
Speaker 3: represent a massive technological leap over Magellan. Remember, Magellan was
Speaker 3: late eighties early nineties.
Speaker 2: Tech floppy disks and dial up modems.
Speaker 3: It did an amazing job, but it was like using
Speaker 3: a fax machine compared to a modern smartphone.
Speaker 2: So what can the new guys do that Magellan couldn't?
Speaker 3: Resolution is the first big jump Vagellan's resolution was roughly
Speaker 3: one hundred to two hundred meters per pixel, so a
Speaker 3: feature had to be about the size of a football
Speaker 3: stadium to really show up clearly. Veritas and a Vision
Speaker 3: will be getting down to fifteen to thirty meters per
Speaker 3: pixel in some modes.
Speaker 2: So instead of a blurry pixel that might be a hole,
Speaker 2: we get high deff.
Speaker 3: We get much clearer images. We will be able to
Speaker 3: study small surface pits, fractures, and textures in much greater detail.
Speaker 3: We could see the exact shape of the skylight's rim.
Speaker 3: But in Vision. The European mission has a secret weapon
Speaker 3: that is particularly relevant to this story.
Speaker 2: Whoah, what is it packing?
Speaker 3: It's carrying an instrument called a subsurface radar sounder that.
Speaker 2: Sounds like something from Star Trek Commander. Activate the subsurface sounder.
Speaker 3: It acts like a ground penetrating radar. Unlike Magellan, which
Speaker 3: just bounce waves off the surface skin, the subsurface radar
Speaker 3: sounder operates at a lower frequency. They can probe into
Speaker 3: the planet.
Speaker 2: Wait, so it can see through the rock.
Speaker 3: To a degree. Yes, it looks for dielectric boundaries, changes
Speaker 3: in material properties beneath the surface, so it can see
Speaker 3: the boundary between solid rock and an empty void. It
Speaker 3: can see down to depths of several hundred meters.
Speaker 2: That's a game changer, it is.
Speaker 3: Think about it right now. We only found this one
Speaker 3: tube because the roof collapsed. We found the accident. We
Speaker 3: found the skylight.
Speaker 2: It's a broken tube exactly, But.
Speaker 3: There could be hundreds, maybe thousands of intax tubes, pristine
Speaker 3: sealed environments that we have no idea about because the
Speaker 3: surface looks flat and unbroken.
Speaker 2: And Envision could find them.
Speaker 3: And Vision could fly over a flat plane and detect
Speaker 3: the hollow void underneath. It could map the entire underground
Speaker 3: network without ever needing a skylight.
Speaker 2: It's like X ray vision for the planet.
Speaker 3: Essentially. Brizone calls this discovery only the beginning of a
Speaker 3: long and fascinating research activity, and he's right. We are
Speaker 3: transitioning from looking at the map to reading the history
Speaker 3: written inside the rock.
Speaker 2: It really makes you appreciate how science works. It's this
Speaker 2: baton pass. Magellan runs the first leg in the nineties,
Speaker 2: collects the data, passes it to the researchers in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty six who analyze it with new tools, and they
Speaker 2: pass the baton to Envision and Veritas to go back
Speaker 2: and look closer with even better tools.
Speaker 3: And each step clarifies the picture. We go from is
Speaker 3: their volcanism? Two, here is a lava tube to let's
Speaker 3: map the entire underground plumbing of Venus.
Speaker 2: I want to circle back to something we touched on earlier.
Speaker 2: The so what for the average person, because let's be honest,
Speaker 2: we aren't planning a vacation to Venus anytime soon.
Speaker 3: Probably not.
Speaker 2: The travel brochures would be terrifying. Come for the acid rain,
Speaker 2: stay for the crushing pressure.
Speaker 3: It's not a top destination as finding.
Speaker 2: A cave on Venus matter to us here on Earth,
Speaker 2: aside from just being undeniably cool, well beyond the pure
Speaker 2: joy of discovery, which shouldn't be underestimated.
Speaker 3: Of course, understanding Venus is crucial for understanding Earth. Yeah,
Speaker 3: have to remember the twin.
Speaker 2: Narrative, right, same size, same mass, basically.
Speaker 3: Formed in the same part of the Solar System, out
Speaker 3: of the same cloud of dust and gas. Yet one
Speaker 3: is a paradise where we can record podcasts and drink coffee,
Speaker 3: and the other is a runaway greenhouse oven.
Speaker 2: So what went wrong?
Speaker 3: That's the question. Understanding the volcanic history of Venus, how
Speaker 3: it outgassed, how the heat escaped from its interior or
Speaker 3: didn't escape, helps us understand planetary evolution. It helps us
Speaker 3: model our own planet's climate in future.
Speaker 2: It's a cautionary tale in a way.
Speaker 3: But also studying these extreme environments tests are physics. If
Speaker 3: our geological models work on Earth, and they work on
Speaker 3: the Moon, and they work on Venus, then we can
Speaker 3: be much more confident that we really understand the universe.
Speaker 3: And if they don't, if they break when we apply
Speaker 3: them to Venus, then we're missing something fundamental. Venus is
Speaker 3: the ultimate stress test for our science. It's extremes push
Speaker 3: our theories to their limits.
Speaker 2: That's a great point. If you can predict a lava
Speaker 2: tube on a planet you can't even see, and then
Speaker 2: find it, you know your math is.
Speaker 3: Solid exactly and there is a practical angle for space
Speaker 3: exploration too. If we ever do send long term probes
Speaker 3: or even humans to other worlds like the Moon or Mars.
Speaker 3: Lava tubes are the prime real.
Speaker 2: Estate because they are shielded.
Speaker 3: Yes, is dangerous. The surface of the Moon or Mars
Speaker 3: is constantly bombarded with cosmic rays and solar radiation.
Speaker 2: Which is bad for astronauts and electronics.
Speaker 3: It's lethal over the long term. And you have micrometeoroids,
Speaker 3: which are like tiny bullets, and the temperature swings can
Speaker 3: be hundreds of degrees between day and night.
Speaker 2: But inside the two you have a roof.
Speaker 3: A very thick roof of solid rock. It blocks the
Speaker 3: radiation almost completely. It stabilizes the temperature, It protects you
Speaker 3: from impacts. They are natural habitats just waiting for us.
Speaker 2: So in a way, hunting for caves on Venus helps
Speaker 2: us hunt for bases on Mars.
Speaker 3: It is all connected. It refines our ability to find
Speaker 3: them everywhere. It teaches us what to look for, and
Speaker 3: radar data what the telltale signs are comparative planetology lifts
Speaker 3: all boats.
Speaker 2: I love that. Okay, let's do a quick recap of
Speaker 2: what we've learned today before we get to the final thought.
Speaker 2: We started with a thirty year old map from a dead.
Speaker 3: Spacecraft, a Magellan mission, a ghost ship.
Speaker 2: Researchers at the University of Trento took that data, applied
Speaker 2: some twenty twenty six magic new algorithms and analysis techniques,
Speaker 2: and looked at a volcanic region called Nix Moon's.
Speaker 3: The Mountain of Night, and there they identified a skylight,
Speaker 3: a collapsed pit in a volcanic range.
Speaker 2: Which turned out to be the front door to a monster,
Speaker 2: A lava tube one kilometer wide buried under one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty meters of rock, extending for at least forty
Speaker 2: five kilometers.
Speaker 3: The structure is shaped by Venus's unique conditions lowish gravity
Speaker 3: and a crushing hot atmosphere, creating an insulated super highway
Speaker 3: for lava.
Speaker 2: And finally we learn that this is just the prequel.
Speaker 2: The real movie starts when Envision and Veritas get there
Speaker 2: with their ground penetrating radar to map the rest of
Speaker 2: the network. A perfect summary, it really makes you think
Speaker 2: about what else is hiding in that data. If Magellan
Speaker 2: has been holding onto this secret for thirty years, what
Speaker 2: other pixels are just waiting for someone to invent the
Speaker 2: right algorithm.
Speaker 3: That is the beauty of archival data. It never expires.
Speaker 3: It just waits for the right question to be asked,
Speaker 3: or for the right tools to be invented.
Speaker 2: Before we wrap up, I want to leave you with
Speaker 2: the thought. We talked about the conditions on the surface
Speaker 2: of Venus hellish, unsurvivable acid heat pressure.
Speaker 3: Yes, the worst place imaginable, as you said.
Speaker 2: But then we talked about this tube, the Pirate Act.
Speaker 2: One hundred and fifty meters of rock is a lot
Speaker 2: of shielding. It blocks the cosmic radiation. It thermally insulates
Speaker 2: from the surface wings. If there are any, we know
Speaker 2: the pressure inside would still be immense. It's an open
Speaker 2: system connected to the atmosphere. But inside that tube, cut
Speaker 2: off from the acid clouds and the surface winds, it's
Speaker 2: a different world.
Speaker 3: Is a stable environment yeah? Dark, certainly hot, absolutely yeah,
Speaker 3: but stable protected.
Speaker 2: If a one kilometer wide tunnel exists under Nick's Mond's
Speaker 2: what is in it? Is it just empty space? Just black,
Speaker 2: pristine basalt frozen in time or is it, as we
Speaker 2: hinted at, the most interesting real estate on.
Speaker 3: The planet, That is the billion dollar question. On Earth,
Speaker 3: caves are often biological hotspots. They protect unique forms of life.
Speaker 3: On Mars, we hope they might preserve signs of ancient
Speaker 3: life from a time when the surface was more habitable
Speaker 3: on Venus.
Speaker 2: On Venus, what could possibly survive there?
Speaker 3: Well, probably nothing as we know it, but it is
Speaker 3: the only place on the entire planet where the surface
Speaker 3: chaos doesn't reach. If there was ever anything on Venus
Speaker 3: that wanted to hide, that wanted to survive the transition
Speaker 3: to the hellscape we see today, that is where it
Speaker 3: would go. A kingdom in the dark, waiting for a
Speaker 3: radar that can see in the dark.
Speaker 2: I love it. We will be watching closely as in
Speaker 2: Vision and Veritas get ready to launch. Until then, keep
Speaker 2: looking up and maybe keep looking down beneath the surface
Speaker 2: thanks to listening to this deep dive.
Speaker 3: Oh Pleasure's always.
Speaker 4: Sat the PASSI