Pescara, Italy

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The scientists, while analysing data which was collected nearly 30 years ago on Venus, have concluded that the volcanoes are likely to be active currently on the planet.

A research group, which was headed by David Sulcanese of the Universita d'Annunzio in Pescara, Italy, used data collected from radar mapping of the surface of the Earth's twin sister in the 1990s when the experts were searching for volcanic lava flows and found their presence in two regions.

The latest discovery has hinted that volcanic activity taking place currently on Venus may be more widespread than believed.

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The work was published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Venus, which is also known as "Earth's twin sister", has a CO2-dominated atmosphere which leads to a massive greenhouse effect and bakes the planet's surface at around 465°C (870°F).

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According to scientists, the surface of Venus was very similar to that of Earth billions of years ago. The presence of liquid water, the brightening sun and volcanic activity increased the planet's temperatures and led to evaporation of all water from the planet, creating a runaway greenhouse effect.

Currently, Venus is broiling hot and appears dead as dense clouds of sulfuric acid surround it.

Venus likely to witness 42 volcanic eruptions a year: study

Scientists, while studying a host of other possibilities, said their "best interpretation" of the observation is that the planet's surface scattering properties like its roughness and composition went through a change between the first cycle of scans and the third cycle, which spanned across nearly 16 months. 

"Our study covered only about 16% of Venus's surface due to the limitation of comparing images from just the two left-look cycles," stated lead author Sulcanese, who has been employed at his university's International Research School of Planetary Sciences.

 "Therefore, it is likely that more evidence of this nature exists on Venus," he added.

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The observations have also supported earlier work that had inferred the current volcanic activity on Venus from indirect evidence like changes in a region's thermal emissivity data, variations in the atmosphere's sulfuric acid and morphological analysis of volcanic-like surface features.

It was also discovered by scientists that Venus is likely to face nearly 42 volcanic eruptions every year and around 20 eruptions will last more than 1,000 Earth days. 

(With inputs from agencies)