New Delhi: Venus may have seemed geologically inactive but recent images of its crust have convinced scientists that the planet’s geology might be far more dynamic than they thought.
A study, published in Nature Geoscience on 24 July by researchers at ETH Zurich, used an advanced computer model to show that some of Venus’s rift valleys may be much younger than they had assumed. The study hints that the Venusian crust might still be stretching and breaking apart, implying that the planet’s insides are still active.
The African Rift Valley is an example of such rifts on earth too, but they are far smaller than their Venusian counterparts which can extend for nearly 10,000 kilometers.
“The results help us to better assess the tectonic activity on Venus,” Taras Gerya, Professor of Geodynamics at the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at ETH, said in a press release.
The last time Venus stole the spotlight in the world of geology was when scientists revisited archival images of the planet taken 30 years ago during NASA’s Magellan mission. At the time, they had spotted what appeared to be a volcano which further suggested that Venus is not a “dead” planet.
For the most recent study, researchers built a 3D thermomechanical computer model to see how the Venusian crust reacts to the plant’s atmosphere. Using these models, researchers analysed three major rifts called Ganis Chasma, Dali Chasma, and Davana Chasma.
Their findings suggest that these rifts might be active today or that they became inactive only in the past few millions of years, which, in the geological timeframe, is not long ago. The simulation model predicts that these rifts were formed as the crust was moving apart nearly 3 – 10 cm per year. This disruption was likely to have been caused by mantle plumes or columns of hot rock rising from deep inside the planet.