New research suggests that geological activity may still be taking place on Venus, making it an object to understand early Earth.
An international team of scientists used old radar images from NASA’s Magellan mission to study the surface of Venus and found evidence that tectonic plates slide over each other and warp.
As the lowlands observed are relatively young, this geological activity certainly occurred not so long ago and may even continue today. The study shows that Venus can generate geological activity from deep within it, unlike previous speculations that the planet’s crust is a solid mass like the Moon and Earth.
The movement of tectonic plates is not only the jostling of rocks, but also an important part of the planet’s carbon cycle. It is this system that has supported life on Earth.
Our planet has not always had the same configuration of the carbon cycle as it does today. Over the past millions of years, Earth has been much warmer, and scientists believe this new study of Venus’ surface could answer questions about tectonic activity on the early Earth or on other distant planets.
The geological activity of Venus is not the same as on Earth, where the plates meet and create spectacular mountain ranges like the Himalayas or large areas of oceanic subduction like the Mariana Trench. However, his recent discovery of evidence of tectonic activity suggests that beneath the planet’s surface there may be a molten region known as the “moving mantle” on a global scale.
When the team observed signs of separation, pushing, spinning and sliding of the Venusian lithosphere, the team created a computer model of this activity. They discovered that the slow movement of the interior of the planet could be the cause.
“Plate tectonics on Earth are driven by convection in the mantle. The mantle is hot or cold in different places. It moves and part of this movement propagates across the Earth’s surface as plate tectonics. “, explains Paul Byrne, associate professor of planetary. at North Carolina State University (NCSU), lead author of the study.
Byrne further notes that the thickness of a planet’s lithosphere depends primarily on its temperature, both inside and on the surface. The heat flow from the interior of early Earth was three times greater than it is now, so its lithosphere may have been similar to what we see on Venus today: not enough thick to form subduction plates, but thick enough to fragment into plates that push, pull, and slide over each other.
The Magellan mission has been inactive since 2004, but currently three new NASA and European Space Agency missions are underway to study Venus. These missions could provide more detailed observations of the planet’s surface, thus helping to shed light on its geological activity.
Details of the study were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on June 21.
