Scientists have found that on Venus billions of years ago there may have been tectonic plate movements similar to those that existed on the early Earth. The results of the study were published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Planetary scientists analyzed data on the properties of Venus' current atmosphere and used computer modeling to determine the relationship between these parameters and the geology. It turned out that today's gas shell chemistry and surface pressure could only be possible if early tectonic processes existed.
It was previously thought that the extremely high surface temperature of Venus, at which even lead would melt, was due to the presence of a "stagnant lid" type of lithosphere, where the Earth's crust consists of a single lithospheric plate moving at low speed under the influence of mantle convection.
However, to explain the abundance of nitrogen and carbon dioxide in Venus' atmosphere, the planet must have experienced plate tectonic movement about 4.5 to 3.5 billion years ago. This means that at that time there were two planets in the solar system on which similar geological processes took place - Earth and Venus. Despite the similarity of the two planets in terms of mass, density and volume, Venus for some reason took a different evolutionary path. /BGNES
