Plate Tectonics in Venus's geologically tagged posts

Thick Lithosphere casts doubt on Plate Tectonics in Venus’s geologically recent past

An image of Mead Crater
Mead crater, the largest impact basin on Venus, is encircled by two rocky rings, which provide valuable information about the planet’s lithosphere. Credit: NASA

At some point between 300 million and 1 billion years ago, a large cosmic object smashed into the planet Venus, leaving a crater more than 170 miles in diameter. A team of Brown University researchers has used that ancient impact scar to explore the possibility that Venus once had Earth-like plate tectonics.

For a study published in Nature Astronomy, the researchers used computer models to recreate the impact that carved out Mead crater, Venus’s largest impact basin. Mead is surrounded by two clifflike faults — rocky ripples frozen in time after the basin-forming impact...

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