Skip to main content

Scientists Discover Way to Send Information into Black Holes Without Using Energy

3 comments

Astronomers Discover Massive Volcanic Cave on Venus for the First Time

For the first time in history, astronomers have found strong evidence of a giant volcanic cave beneath the surface of Venus. Using decades-old radar images from NASA’s Magellan mission, a team from the University of Trento in Italy has identified what appears to be an enormous lava tube beneath the volcano Nyx Mons. Their findings, published in Nature Communications, represent the first direct radar evidence of a subsurface volcanic conduit on our neighboring planet.

A Hidden Giant Beneath Nyx Mons

The newly discovered structure is located on the western flank of Nyx Mons, a massive shield volcano about 362 kilometers wide. Radar images reveal a dark pit surrounded by a chain of smaller collapses. The researchers have labeled this notable depression “Pit A.”

While most pits show simple radar patterns of steep holes, Pit A behaves differently. Its radar echo includes a bright, uneven streak that stretches beyond the rim, a signature that scientists recognize from skylights—holes in a lava tube roof that let radar waves enter and bounce along the underground tunnel. This strongly suggests that Pit A is a skylight in a vast lava tube, a passage that once carried molten rock beneath Venus’s surface.

Reading Venus’s Surface Through Radar

Venus is cloaked in dense clouds that make it impossible for ordinary cameras to see the surface. To overcome this, the Magellan spacecraft used Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) in the early 1990s to map the planet globally. Today, those radar images are revealing secrets long hidden beneath the clouds.

The Italian research team applied techniques developed for lava tubes on Earth and the Moon, treating the radar images like an X-ray of the terrain. By studying the brightness and shadows in Pit A, they estimated the shape of the underground void.

Their analysis indicates a truly enormous conduit:

  • Width: About 1 kilometer across on average

  • Roof thickness: At least 150 meters

  • Height of the hollow space: Approximately 375 meters

  • Radar signal travel inside tube: At least 300 meters from the skylight

  • Estimated full length: Around 45 kilometers beneath Nyx Mons

To put this in perspective, Earth’s famous lava tubes, like Cueva de los Verdes on Lanzarote, are only tens of meters wide. The Venusian tube is on a completely different scale, dwarfing anything on Earth.

Why Lava Tubes on Venus Are Important

Lava tubes are more than just geological curiosities. They preserve a record of how volcanoes formed and evolved, helping scientists understand the geological history of a planet. On the Moon and Mars, lava tubes are even considered potential natural shelters for future explorers, offering protection from radiation, extreme temperatures, and micrometeorites.

On Venus, conditions are far harsher. Surface temperatures soar above 450 degrees Celsius, and atmospheric pressure is more than ninety times that of Earth. So while camping in a Venusian lava tube isn’t on anyone’s agenda, the discovery has huge scientific implications.

Venus is often called Earth’s twin, yet it followed a dramatically different path. Its thick carbon dioxide atmosphere created a runaway greenhouse effect, resulting in scorching temperatures and clouds of corrosive sulfuric acid. By studying its volcanoes, scientists can better understand how Venus lost any possible oceans and evolved into the hostile world we see today. Lava tubes and subsurface channels play a key role in this story, controlling how gas moves from the planet’s interior to its atmosphere and influencing long-term climate evolution.

Radar data also suggest that lava channels and chains of collapses are widespread on Venus. If such a massive lava tube can be found in thirty-year-old radar images, many more might still be hidden, waiting for scientists to uncover them.

A Target for Future Venus Missions

This discovery is just the beginning. Upcoming missions to Venus are poised to examine the planet in unprecedented detail. NASA’s VERITAS and the European Space Agency’s EnVision missions will carry advanced radar instruments capable of mapping the surface with resolutions down to tens of meters.

EnVision’s Subsurface Radar Sounder, for example, is designed to probe several hundred meters below the surface—perfect for investigating the Nyx Mons lava tube. These missions could confirm the size of the cave near Pit A and map intact tubes that do not show surface collapses. Eventually, scientists hope to build a three-dimensional map of Venusian volcanic systems, something never achieved before.

Lessons for Earth and Beyond

At first glance, a lava tube on Venus might seem far removed from everyday concerns on Earth, such as climate change, energy use, or pollution. However, Venus serves as a stark example of how a planet similar in size to Earth can become extreme and inhospitable when greenhouse gases dominate its atmosphere.

By understanding Venus’s volcanoes and buried lava tubes, researchers can study the processes that push a rocky planet from a potentially habitable world to a fiery, high-pressure environment. Such knowledge helps us appreciate the delicate balance that makes Earth habitable and underscores the importance of managing our own planet’s climate.

Conclusion

The discovery of a giant lava tube beneath Nyx Mons is a milestone in planetary science. For the first time, astronomers have direct evidence of a subsurface volcanic system on Venus, revealing the complexity of its geological structures. With future radar missions, scientists hope to explore these hidden caves in greater detail, piecing together the history of Venus’s volcanoes and atmosphere.

Venus may seem distant, but its lessons are close to home. By studying how Earth’s twin went from a potentially life-supporting planet to a blazing greenhouse world, we gain crucial insights into climate evolution, planetary geology, and the fragile conditions that make life possible.

The study that revealed this remarkable discovery was published in Nature Communications by Carrer, L., Diana, E., & Bruzzone, L. (2026).

Reference: Carrer, L., Diana, E. & Bruzzone, L. Radar-based observation of a lava tube on Venus. Nat Commun 17, 1147 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-68643-6

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular

Scientists Discover Way to Send Information into Black Holes Without Using Energy

For years, scientists believed that adding even one qubit (a unit of quantum information) to a black hole needed energy. This was based on the idea that a black hole’s entropy must increase with more information, which means it must gain energy. But a new study by Jonah Kudler-Flam and Geoff Penington changes that thinking. They found that quantum information can be teleported into a black hole without adding energy or increasing entropy . This works through a process called black hole decoherence , where “soft” radiation — very low-energy signals — carry information into the black hole. In their method, the qubit enters the black hole while a new pair of entangled particles (like Hawking radiation) is created. This keeps the total information balanced, so there's no violation of the laws of physics. The energy cost only shows up when information is erased from the outside — these are called zerobits . According to Landauer’s principle, erasing information always needs energy. But ...
3 comments
Read more

Black Holes That Never Dies

Black holes are powerful objects in space with gravity so strong that nothing can escape them. In the 1970s, Stephen Hawking showed that black holes can slowly lose energy by giving off tiny particles. This process is called Hawking radiation . Over time, the black hole gets smaller and hotter, and in the end, it disappears completely. But new research by Menezes and his team shows something different. Using a theory called Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) , they studied black holes with quantum corrections. In their model, the black hole does not vanish completely. Instead, it stops shrinking when it reaches a very small size. This leftover is called a black hole remnant . They also studied something called grey-body factors , which affect how much energy escapes from a black hole. Their findings show that the black hole cools down and stops losing mass once it reaches a minimum mass . This new model removes the idea of a “singularity” at the center of the black hole and gives us a better ...
Post a Comment
Read more

How Planetary Movements Might Explain Sunspot Cycles and Solar Phenomena

Sunspots, dark patches on the Sun's surface, follow a cycle of increasing and decreasing activity every 11 years. For years, scientists have relied on the dynamo model to explain this cycle. According to this model, the Sun's magnetic field is generated by the movement of plasma and the Sun's rotation. However, this model does not fully explain why the sunspot cycle is sometimes unpredictable. Lauri Jetsu, a researcher, has proposed a new approach. Jetsu’s analysis, using a method called the Discrete Chi-square Method (DCM), suggests that planetary movements, especially those of Earth, Jupiter, and Mercury, play a key role in driving the sunspot cycle. His theory focuses on Flux Transfer Events (FTEs), where the magnetic fields of these planets interact with the Sun’s magnetic field. These interactions could create the sunspots and explain other solar phenomena like the Sun’s magnetic polarity reversing every 11 years. The Sun, our closest star, has been a subject of scient...
Post a Comment
Read more