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Earth and its inhospitable “evil twin” may have been brought even closer together, new research suggests.
Today, Venus appears to lack the tectonic activity seen on Earth, but surface features such as faults, folds, and volcanoes suggest that this hellish planet, with temperatures high enough to melt lead and terrifying surface pressures, was once tectonically active.
New research has revealed striking plateaus called “tesserae” on the surface of Venus, suggesting that similar intense tectonic activity to the one that formed Earth’s first continents billions of years ago may have occurred on Venus.
“With its scorching surface temperature of 860 degrees Fahrenheit (460 degrees Celsius) and lack of plate tectonics, we did not expect Venus to have such complex geological features,” study leader Fabio Capitanio, of Monash University’s School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, said in a statement. [done in collaboration with NASA] “It challenges our understanding of how planets evolve.”
Relating to: New atmospheric evidence suggests Venus could support life
What’s going on on Venus?
Plate tectonics refers to the theory that the hard outer layer of a rocky planet’s crust, called the lithosphere, is made up of a series of large plates that move around, over, away from, beneath, and against each other. In the process, these actions help shape a planet. So far, active plate tectonics has only been observed on Earth.
With its stagnant lithosphere or “stagnant lid”, Venus has a single plate with minimal movement. However, its tectonic history is heavily debated. Many scientists speculate that Venus may have transitioned from limited tectonic movement early in its history to the stagnant lid model that exists today.
To investigate this, Capitanio’s team turned to features on Venus called the Ishtar Terra plateaus, which are unusual given the current lack of plate activity.
The [Ishtar Terra highlands] “It consists of an Australian-sized crustal plateau with an average elevation of about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) and similar to the Tibetan Plateau, surrounded by long mountain belts that are about 6.2 miles (10 km) high and higher than the Himalayas,” the team wrote in a paper discussing the findings published in the journal Nature Geoscience. “The region is covered by a thick crust similar to Earth’s cratons.”
On Earth, these formations are formed by tectonic plates colliding with each other. So how could they have formed on a still surface on Venus?
The team suggests that these formations could provide further evidence that Earth and Venus have similar geological histories and could hold the key to understanding the geological evolution of rocky planets.
To investigate possible geological mechanisms that led to the formation of the Ishtar Terra plateaus, scientists combined computer modeling with data collected by researchers. Magellan spacecraft.
In 1990, NASA’s Magellan mission became the first spacecraft to image the entire surface of Venus. This allowed scientists to determine the thermal, chemical, and mechanical evolution of the planet’s mantle and lithosphere and to develop scenarios that could have led to the formation of the Ishtar Terra plateaus.
The team then compared the model’s results to Earth’s mantle processes using established scientific methods. And perhaps most importantly, the researchers tested different strengths of the lithosphere that would reflect Venus’s warmer surface temperatures.
This approach allowed them to integrate previous models that focused on tectonic features or planetary regimes, ranging from mobile (like on Earth) to stationary (like on Venus) surface states, by comparing mantle dynamics and lithosphere behavior.
The results showed how plateaus could conceivably form through a process in which the planet’s surface thins and melts due to its low strength, creating high areas as molten rock rises. Over time, the stretching slows as the mantle becomes more resistant, leading to cooling and the formation of high plains surrounded by folded belts.
This mechanism coincides with the formation of ancient cores of tectonic plates, known as “cratons”, on the hot early Earth, which occurred before the onset of plate tectonics.
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“This finding provides a fascinating new perspective on Venus and its possible connections to early Earth,” Capitanio said. “The features we found on Venus are strikingly similar to early Earth continents, suggesting that the dynamics of Venus’s past may have been more similar to Earth’s than previously thought.”
The researcher hopes that by studying similar features on Venus, it may be possible to unlock secrets about Earth’s early history.
“Our research paves the way for future missions to Venus, such as DAVINCI, VERITAS, and EnVision,” Capitanio concluded. “These missions will provide more information about Venus’ geological history and its connection to Earth.”