Thursday, January 28, 2021

One kraton of mead for Aphrodite

Brown University, alma mater of Curtis Yarvin, got things to say 'bout Mead Crater. When its meteor hit Venus, it hit a particularly thick part of the lithosphere. Its crater hasn't changed since.

This implies no tectonics since then... nor, really, recently before then. The crustal "lid" was "stagnant". doi 10.1038/s41550-020-01289-6.

As for "then", there the timing isn't constrained too well: 1000-300 Mya. Ever since Magellan there's been talk about a Great Reset Resurfacing - 500±200 Mya, on the tail end of Mead's date. Any resurfacing of course would have covered any craters so, the Mead impact postdates that.

That Venus' crust is this thick does help us, in that it keeps Maxwell Montes standing tall. Maybe even such as to support higher robust structures, above the worst of the heat.

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