Venus Is… Scrunchy
Venus’s tectonics are a vital part of understanding the planet’s evolution and continued growth. But the tectonics are super weird. For one, there’s the tesserae, geologically complex terrain on Venus composed of troughs and ridges that look like someone scrunched up bits of the planet. The tesserae on Venus are very old—which raises another quandary, as other stretches of rock are not. How are the younger bits of Venus’s crust coming about, if not through volcanic activity? And does the rock on Venus move at all, or is it completely static? A study published in June 2021 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describes the interrelated jostling of various lowland areas of Venus. Thankfully, the upcoming missions to Venus will vastly increase the amount we know, and planetary scientists won’t have to lean on data collected decades ago.
