A new study reveals signs over high of geological activity in Venus, clues that the mysterious surface of the planet is still changing today. These signs, which are found in the giant circular characteristics called “crowns”, may not remodel our understanding of Venus, but also sacrifice a vision of the ancient of the earth.
Crowns are fixed structures of oval shape that vary in size from boxes to hundreds or miles wide. It is believed to be formed when the hot feathers from the bottom of the interior of a planet push against the outer shell of IS, called lithosphere. Imagine a slow chamber bubble or a molten rock that presses up under the surface, deforming and cracking the cortex above.
These dramatic geological characteristics, surrounded by fracture rings, are dispersed by Venus, which offer an impressive window to the internal functioning of the planet, scientists say. “They are very large characteristics, and people have proposed different theories over the years on how they formed,” said Coautthor Anna Gülcher, a planetary scientist at the University of Bern of Switzerland, in a NASA/JPL statement. “The most exciting thing for our study is that we can now say that it is very likely that there are active processes of vareo and activation that promote their training.”
These massive ovals once splashed the landscape of our planet, so studying them in Venus can reveal a lot about both planets, scientists say.
“The crowns are not found today; however, they may have existed when our planet was young and before the plaque tectonics had established,” said the main author of the study, Gael Cascioli, Baltim, Nasista of the flight center of the University of Maryland in Greenbelt, Maryland in the statement.
“By combining gravity and topography data, this research has provided a new and important vision of possible underground processes that currently shape the surface of Venus.”
To discover the most likely process behind the formation of Coronae in Venus, the team built a 3D computer model that simulates the flow of hot material within the planet, such as a virtual experiment of the internal operations of the planet. They tested different training scenarios and compared their results with the data of gravity and topography collected by the Magellan space of NASA, which mapped Venus in the early 1990s.
Gravity data, which measured the force of gravity at different points along the planet’s surface, turned out to be a change of play. This is because the densest material throws more strongly on nearby objects, while the least dense material exerts a weaker pull. The data helped scientists detect hidden columns of hot and less dense material that rose from the bottom of Venus, something that the surface maps alone could not reveal.
Of 75 crowns examined, 52 showed signs of these underground forces still in operation, insinuating that tectonic activity can be more widespread in Venus than was previously thought.
The team believes that several tectonic processes can shape the surface of Venus around the crowns. In some cases, the subduction activity, a process, a process where a part of the outer roof of a planet is forced downward to the warmer and deeper interior when the hot feathers increase and push the surface material outward and down. This is similar to how tectonic plates interact on earth.
They also say that another process called Litospheric dripping, which involves colder and more heavy parts of the surface that sink into the hottest mantle below, could be responsible for the tectonic activity underlying the crowns. A third possibility is that feathers under the volcanic activity of thicker bark up.
Whatever the cause of the crowns, they suggest that Venus can be geologically active in a complex and varied way, which gives researchers intight intight could work on planets without earth limits, and possibly.
While a significant and extensive study, the team was based on old data, and the largest resolution images captured by the next mission of Veritas will help them clarify their results.
“Veritas de Venus’s gravity maps will increase the resolution due to at least one factor of two to four, depending on the location, a level of detail that could revolutionize our understanding of geology and the implications of Venus for the first earthly,” said Verus de Venus main researcher, in the JPL statement. Veritas will launch in 2031.
A Crownae study was published in Venus in the journal Science Advances.
