New Images Suggest Hellish Venus Was Once More Like Earth

A European spacecraft that has been peering through the thick, roiling clouds of Venus for the past three years has found further evidence that the inhospitable planet once had oceans, volcanoes, and a system of plate tectonics similar to those at work on Earth. The Venus Express has mapped the planet's southern hemisphere using infrared imaging, and found heat variations in the surface rocks, which allows researchers to speculate on the chemical composition of those rocks.