The bold question-askers at What If explore whether life could survive on Venus given its gravity is 91% that of Earth's.

Venus is hiding something very, very big. Every so often, a wave of hot air rises up from the planet's Hell-like surface and stretches across its entire diameter. The stationary gravity wave, as ...

For decades, Venus, often dubbed “Earth’s twin,” has been depicted as a barren, inhospitable world, its surface locked in an unchanging, oven-hot state. Yet, recent data from NASA’s Magellan orbiter ...

The European Space Agency's Venus Express orbiter have has spotted many small-scale 'gravity' wave trains in the planet's clouds. The waves are mostly found at high northern latitudes ...

As gravity attempts to restore equilibrium, it overshoots, causing a wave effect. This is what probably caused the 10,000-kilometre (6,214-mile) wave across the surface of Venus.

Venus's atmosphere is comprised of 96.5 percent carbon dioxide and 3.5 percent nitrogen, along with trace amounts of other gases like oxygen and sulfur dioxide.

The data was gathered by the Magellan mission, which remains the best data on the gravity and topography of Venus despite having orbited the planet in the 1990s.

However, part of the journey to the Sun was using Venus’ gravity to slingshot the probe closer to our star. During that maneuver, NASA decided to capture images of the planet, too.

So Magellan’s spatial mapping of Venus’s gravity can “see” if there’s hot, light material under a corona—a sign that rock is actively rising up from the mantle below.