Venus' Volcanic Pancakes: The Real Story

Venus, often dubbed Earth's evil twin, is a world full of oddities. Among its many quirks are the so-called pancake domes. These are giant, circular volcanoes that look like giant, cooked pancakes. For a long time, scientists thought these domes were made by slow-moving, thick lava. But new findings suggest there's more to the story. A group of researchers took a fresh look at one of Venus' largest pancake domes. This dome, named Narina Tholus, is about 90 miles wide. They used old radar data from a NASA mission to create a detailed model of the dome. Their goal was to figure out how different types of lava and surface conditions might affect its shape. The team's simulations showed that lava alone couldn't explain the dome's flat top and steep sides. Instead, they found that the planet's crust plays a big role. Venus' crust can bend under pressure, and this bending affects how lava spreads. When the crust is soft and bendy, lava piles up and stops spreading, creating the classic pancake shape. But not just any lava can make these domes. The models only worked with ultra-thick, super viscous lava. This type of lava is incredibly dense and flows extremely slowly. It can take hundreds of thousands of years to settle into its final shape. This slow-moving lava, combined with a bendy crust, creates the flat-topped, steep-sided domes seen on Venus. The study's success in replicating these features is a big step forward. It helps scientists understand Venus' volcanic past. But this is just the start. Upcoming missions to Venus aim to gather more data. They will test if the same crust-lava interactions happen all over the planet. If these findings are confirmed, they could change what we know about Venus. They might explain why Venus is so different from Earth, despite their similar size and makeup. The planet's history is a mystery, and these pancake domes might hold some of the answers.