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Venus has lava tubes, and they're weird


It has been suggested that lava tubes - underground tunnels carved out by molten rock - might be on Venus, and now we have direct evidence that this is the case

On the moon, for instance, the tubes are so large that scientists have proposed using them as live-in shelters for astronauts, providing shielding from the harsh solar wind. Now, Barbara De Toffoli at the University of Padova in Italy and her colleagues have found direct evidence of lava tubes on Venus. Using radar and mapping data from past missions, De Toffoli and her team analysed how these pits lined up and were arranged near large volcanoes.

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