{"id":25785,"date":"2021-06-22T06:08:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-22T06:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=25785"},"modified":"2021-06-23T10:14:19","modified_gmt":"2021-06-23T10:14:19","slug":"the-surface-of-venus-is-cracked-and-moves-like-ice-floating-on-the-ocean-likely-due-to-tectonic-activity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/the-surface-of-venus-is-cracked-and-moves-like-ice-floating-on-the-ocean-likely-due-to-tectonic-activity\/","title":{"rendered":"The surface of Venus is cracked and moves like ice floating on the ocean \u2013 likely due to tectonic activity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Paul K. Byrne<\/a>, North Carolina State University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Research Brief<\/a> is a short take about interesting academic work.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The big idea<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Much of the brittle, upper crust of Venus is broken into fragments that jostle and move \u2013 and the slow churning of Venus\u2019 mantle beneath the surface might be responsible. My colleagues and I arrived at this finding using decades-old radar data<\/a> to explore how the surface of Venus interacts with the interior of the planet. We describe it in a new study published<\/a> in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on June 21, 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Planetary scientists like me<\/a> have long known that Venus has a plethora of tectonic landforms<\/a>. Some of these formations are long, thin belts where the crust has been pushed together to form ridges or pulled apart to form troughs and grooves. In many of these belts there\u2019s evidence that pieces of the crust have moved side to side, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our new study shows, for the first time, that these bands of ridges and troughs often mark the boundaries of flat, low-lying areas that themselves show relatively little deformation and are individual blocks of Venus\u2019 crust that have shifted, rotated and slid past each other over time \u2013 and may have done so in the recent past. It\u2019s a little like Earth\u2019s plate tectonics<\/a> but on a smaller scale and more closely resembles pack ice that floats atop the ocean<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a>
Where ice chunks collide, the ice is thrust upwards to create ridges much like what researchers think happens on Venus. Ben Holt and Susan Digby\/WikimediaCommons<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"An<\/a>
The crust of Venus is fractured into large pieces that behave more like chunks of ice floating on the ocean. Endlisnis\/WikimediaCommons<\/a>, CC BY<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Researchers have hypothesized that \u2013 just like Earth\u2019s mantle<\/a> \u2013 the mantle of Venus swirls with currents as it\u2019s heated from below. My colleagues and I modeled the sluggish but powerful movement of Venus\u2019 mantle and showed that it is sufficiently forceful to fragment the upper crust everywhere we\u2019ve found these lowland blocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why it matters<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A major question about Venus is whether the planet has active volcanoes and tectonic faulting today. It\u2019s essentially the same size, composition and age as Earth \u2013 so why wouldn\u2019t it be geologically alive?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But no mission to Venus has yet conclusively shown the planet to be active. There\u2019s tantalizing but ultimately inconclusive evidence that volcanic eruptions have taken place there in the geologically recent past<\/a> \u2013 and are perhaps even ongoing. The case for tectonic activity \u2013 the creaking, breaking and folding of the planet\u2019s crust \u2013 is on even less solid ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Showing that Venus\u2019 geological engine is still running would have huge implications for understanding the composition of the planet\u2019s mantle, where and how volcanism might be taking place today and how the very crust itself is formed, destroyed and replaced. Because our study suggests that some of this jostling of the crust is geologically recent, we may have taken a big step forward in understanding if Venus really is active today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a>
The largest block of lowlands the team found \u2013 the dark red shape in the center of this radar image \u2013 is about the size of Alaska and surrounded by ridges and deformations that show up as lighter colors. Paul K. Byrne\/NASA\/USGS<\/a>, CC BY-ND<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What still isn\u2019t known<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not clear just how widespread these crustal fragments are. My colleagues and I have found 58 so far, but that\u2019s almost certainly a low estimate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also don\u2019t yet know when these crustal blocks first formed, nor how long they\u2019ve been moving around on Venus. Determining when the crust\u2019s fragmentation and jostling occurred is key \u2013 especially if planetary scientists want to understand this phenomenon in relation to the planet\u2019s suspected recent volcanic activity. Figuring that out would give us vital information on how the planet\u2019s surface features reflect the geological turmoil within.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s next<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This initial study has allowed my colleagues and me to make our best guess yet about how Venus\u2019 vast lowlands have been deformed, but we need much higher-resolution radar images and topographic data to build on this work. Luckily, that\u2019s exactly what scientists are going to get<\/a> in the coming years, with NASA<\/a> and the European Space Agency<\/a> both recently announcing new missions bound for Venus later this decade. It\u2019ll be worth the wait to get a better understanding of Earth\u2019s enigmatic neighbor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[The Conversation\u2019s science, health and technology editors pick their favorite stories.<\/em> Weekly on Wednesdays<\/a>.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul K. Byrne<\/a>, Associate Professor of Planetary Science, North Carolina State University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul K. Byrne, North Carolina State University The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea Much of the brittle, upper crust of Venus is broken into fragments that jostle and move \u2013 and the slow churning of Venus\u2019 mantle beneath the surface might be responsible. My colleagues and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":25786,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3410],"tags":[1866,10096,10093,4492,10095,2911,7539,2197,7727,4417,343,187,8679,3609],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25785"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25785"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25798,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25785\/revisions\/25798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}