[SwRI] NASA’s Juno mission has made the first direct measurements of the temperature below the surface of Jupiter’s moon Io, which reveal significant heating in the upper few feet of […]
Lava / magma ocean / Volcanic Worlds
Posted inVenus
Venus: Dead? Far From It
[ETH Zurich] Simulations conducted by researchers at ETH Zurich suggest a strong likelihood that Venus’s rift valleys are still geologically active rather than being mere relics of a bygone era, […]
Posted inIo
Lava World Recon: Juno Studies Io’s Volcanoes
[NASA] NASA’s Juno mission has provided the first measurements of the temperature below the surface of Jupiter’s moon Io, revealing significant heating within the shallow subsurface of the most volcanically […]
![Numerical computations corresponding to the candidate pattern in the H–alpha filter (λ0 = 656 nm), for the total flux (left) and the polarized flux (right). The background polarization signal has been subtracted from the latter. The decrease in spatial resolution due to the Earth’s atmosphere is not included. The planetary atmosphere is assumed to be horizontally homogeneous except for the gas density variations. -- [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Planet-wide.png?resize=1200%2C711&ssl=1)
Posted inVenus
Planet-wide, Concentric Density Waves in Venus’s Upper Atmosphere Revealed through Polarimetry?
[astro-ph.EP] We report observations of faint (10−6), concentric, planet-wide rings in the polarized flux of sunlight that is reflected by Venus, obtained during a serendipitous, 36-minute run in 2010, with […]
![Schematic of the coupled interior-atmosphere evolutionary framework PROTEUS, showing the links between interior, surface, atmosphere, and stellar modules. Core components include SPIDER (mantle dynamics), CALLIOPE (surface in-/outgassing), AGNI/JANUS (radiativeand prescribed-convective atmospheres), ZEPHYRUS (atmospheric escape), and MORS (XUV stellar evolution). Modules exchange energy fluxes at each planetary interfaces—including core cooling, volatile outgassing, heat transport, heat loss to space, escape and stellar irradiation—while C–H–O–N–S volatiles are tracked throughout the mantle and atmosphere. -- [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Atmospheric-evolution.png?resize=1200%2C718&ssl=1)
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather
Atmospheric Evolution Through Outgassing And Escape On Young Molten Rocky Exoplanets
[astro-ph.EP] The earliest rocky planet atmospheres are shaped by competition between initial volatile inventories and atmospheric escape. On young magma ocean planets, outgassing competes with atmospheric escape, controlling volatile retention […]
![Reflation events (red) occur across a range of ages and with different magnitudes across the evolution of irradiated super-Earths. The plot shows the normalised bulk density evolution of individual simulations, versus the time elapsed since planet formation. The red lines indicate cases where a reflation event occurs, while blue lines indicate those where it does not occur. The evolution tracks that end with a dot indicate the planet has reached an airless state and complete atmospheric erosion by hydrodynamic escape has taken place. The evolution of the two select cases for Figure 1 are highlighted and denoted with a R and D. These cases illustrate in more detail a representative reflation (red) and deflation case (blue). -- [astro-ph.EP]](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Reflation.png?resize=1200%2C717&ssl=1)
Posted inAstrogeology
Reflation: Redox-driven Atmospheric Inflation As Tracer Of Super-Earth Geochemistry
[astro-ph.EP] We demonstrate that the redox-sensitivity of mantle outgassing can trigger transient episodes of atmospheric re-inflation in highly irradiated and geochemically-reduced super-Earths, a mechanism we term reflation.
Posted inLava / magma ocean / Volcanic Worlds
Coupled AtmospHere Interior modeL Intercomparison (CHILI). I. Evolutionary Modelling — Primordial Magma Oceans of Earth and Venus
[astro-ph.EP] Earth and Venus represent two evolutionary outcomes arising from initially molten ‘magma ocean’ periods, followed by lifetimes of chemical and geophysical divergence. Their physics is common to all rocky […]
Posted inAstrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Ice Giant, Lava / magma ocean / Volcanic Worlds, Neptune, Status Report, Uranus, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
Ice Giants Revisited: Uranus And Neptune As Magma Ocean Worlds
Uranus and Neptune are commonly interpreted as volatile-rich “ice giants”, an assumption that underpins most interior models.
Posted inAstrogeology, Lava / magma ocean / Volcanic Worlds, Moon, Origin & Evolution of Life, Status Report
Resonant Lunar Tides Of Earth’s Core And Basal Magma Ocean
Earth’s magnetic field is generated by fluid motion in the liquid-metal core and has been active for billions of year.
Posted inBiogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Extremeophiles and Extreme Environments, Fossils & Paleontology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Lava / magma ocean / Volcanic Worlds, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
New Astrobiology Special Collection Explores Emerging Scientific Evidence For Land-based Origins Of Life
The scientific study of life’s origins is undergoing a major transition, from a decades-long focus on deep-sea hydrothermal vents toward increasing investigation of hot springs and other chemically dynamic environments […]