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Venus may still be active based on 'pack ice' finding - CNN
Jun 21, 2021 1 min, 13 secs

"We've identified a previously unrecognized pattern of tectonic deformation on Venus, one that is driven by interior motion just like on Earth," said Paul Byrne, lead study author and associate professor of planetary science at North Carolina State University, in a statement.

The researchers modeled this surface deformation and determined that these tectonics actually match the slow movement of the planet's interior.

"These observations tell us that interior motion is driving surface deformation on Venus, in a similar way to what happens on Earth," Byrne said.

"It's not plate tectonics like on Earth -- there aren't huge mountain ranges being created here, or giant subduction systems -- but it is evidence of deformation due to interior mantle flow, which hasn't been demonstrated on a global scale before," Byrne said.

The movement and deformation of the crustal blocks also points to something else: Venus is likely still geologically active today.

This gives us reason to think that some of these blocks may have moved geologically very recently -- perhaps even up to today."

Future missions to Venus could shed more light on this, given that the Magellan data is from the 1990s.

By studying this pack ice pattern on Venus, researchers could use it to study exoplanets outside of our solar system and even the tectonics that were active on early Earth.

"The thickness of a planet's lithosphere depends mainly upon how hot it is, both in the interior and on the surface," Byrne said.

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