Solar System with Professor Brian Cox | Preview (BBC Two)

Join Professor Brian Cox on a journey to the Volcano Worlds of our solar system as he explores planets and moons bursting with fire and ice, with eruptions so violent they reach far out into space.

Volcanic and tectonic activity on Earth have been critical to the evolution and survival of life on our planet, so understanding what drives the solar system’s volcanic worlds is a crucial first step in the search for life beyond Earth.

Our first stop is Mars, home to the largest volcano in our solar system: Olympus Mons. Mars’ surface is home to the largest volcanoes in the solar system. All of these giants long ago felt silent, the question is, why? Recently, peculiarly angular rock formations have been discovered amongst Mars’ ancient lava flows that offer a tantalising clue to what brought the grandest volcanism the solar system to an end.

Leaving Mars, we enter the realm of Jupiter and its many moons, where among them lies the most volcanically active world in our solar system: Io. This tiny moon should have long lost its inner heat, but it’s kept alive by a strange orbit around its gargantuan parent planet. Io is so active that giant plumes erupt from its surface, and vast lava lakes create an eerie pockmarked glow.

Beyond Jupiter, it seems there are no more worlds with molten rock erupting onto the surface; however, we have seen evidence of icy eruptions. The tiny moon Enceladus orbits Saturn with a glistening, frozen shell of ice.

At its south pole, we’ve witnessed giant plumes of ice and water erupting from the surface. It’s believed there is an ocean of water beneath the surface, heated by a hot rocky core. Evidence from the plumes suggests that all the ingredients for life to evolve could exist beneath the icy surface.

Icy volcanism has even been discovered beyond Saturn, on Neptune’s frozen moon Triton. During a brief flyby, this frigid, twilight world was found to have giant plumes erupting from its surface. This far from the Sun, Triton is the most distant active volcanic world yet discovered in our solar system.

For the last decade or two, these have been the only active volcanic worlds we’ve known. Recently though, we’ve discovered something that we’d missed. Another active volcanic planet much closer to home.

Thanks to radar measurements, we’ve known our neighbouring planet Venus is covered in an array of strange and exotic-shaped volcanoes. But this hot and hellish world is notoriously hard to study, not least because it’s cloaked in thick, dense clouds, so it was unclear if any of its 85,000 volcanoes are still active.

Now re-analysis of radar data from a long-lost probe has revealed evidence of lava flowing from a volcano the height of Mount Everest and we believe many more are erupting to this day. 

Solar System begins Monday 7th October on BBC Two.