On the underside of its dreary shroud of clouds, Venus could be positively hopping. The experts on planetary geology have seen flow of lava. According to them, this lava flow is no older than a decade. If the given statement gets sufficient scientific backing, it would be the youngest proof for volcanism on the planet Venus.

“The flow we studied seems to be very young – it is still warm inside,” says Nataliya Bondarenko, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She, along with her colleagues, is going to describe this latest finding in an upcoming issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

The scientists have been thinking about the geological activity level of Venus for a long time. Till date, more than 1, 000 volcanoes dot its surface. However, researchers have struggled to collect evidence to correctly describe that the planet is active today and not long dead, as is the case with Mars.

In April, researchers published a paper in the Science. It described tehflow of lava from three aprts of Venus’ southern hemisphere. These three regions are known to be the hot spots of geological activity. As the Venus Express data comes from the southern hemisphere only, they can’t say anything clearly about the activity status of Venus.