The internal structure of a planet informs us about its formation and evolution. Scientists have probed Earth’s interiors for more than a century using seismology, but what lies beneath the surface Venus remains a mystery.

Very few probes have been sent to Venus so far, and due to its very hot and dense surface, no seismometer was ever deployed on the ground. As part of the AIR project (Airborne Inversion of Rayleigh waves, funded by a FRIPRO grant of the Norwegian research council), researchers at NORSAR investigate whether Venus seismology could be performed from the air, without using a traditional seismometer.

The same way a drum emits sound when it vibrates, ground shaking following an earthquake (or a venusquakes) generates inaudible acoustic waves in the atmosphere, called infrasound. In 2021, infrasound from a major earthquake in the Flores Sea, Indonesia, was recorded by four balloons floating at about 18 km altitude.

In a recent study published in Communications Earth & Environment, Marouchka Froment showed that the signals from these balloons could be used to reveal information on the earthquake location, but also on the subsurface structure of the Earth. This is a compelling demonstration that balloon-based seismology could be used in the future to unveil the secrets of Venus interiors.

You can read the full article here, and if you want to a read a story that digs deeper into the science behind the paper you can find that here.  

Learn more about the AIR project here.