An oblique radar view of the largest “pack ice” block in the Venus lowlands identified by Byrne et al. (Paul Byrne, based on original NASA/JPL imagery).

The two Earth-sized planets in our solar system have taken wildly different evolutionary routes. The surface of the Earth became a temperate utopia for a liquid water and a myriad of life. But while similar in both size and mass, the surface of the neighboring Venus is hot enough to melt lead.

These differences are the key to understanding the possible outcomes for a rocky planet after it forms out of the dusty disk around a young star. Knowledge of the rocky options is needed to identify the surface environments of extrasolar planets from the limited data we can gleam through our telescopes, and to unpick the properties needed to form a habitable planet. It is a task considered so important that three new Venus missions were approved by NASA and ESA in the last month.

(Read about these missions on Many Worlds here and here)

One such difference between the Earth and Venus is the type of planet surface or, more precisely, the structure of the planet lithosphere that comprises of the crust and uppermost part of the mantle.

The Earth’s lithosphere is broken into mobile chunks that can subduct beneath one another, bunch up to form mountain rages, or pull part. This motion is known as plate tectonics, and it allows material to be cycled between our surface and the hidden mantle deep below our feet. It is a geological process that replenishes nutrients, cools the planet interior, and also forms part of the Earth’s carbon cycle that adjusts the levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere to keep our environment temperate. Without this cycling ability, the Earth would not have been able to stay habitable over such a long period.

Venus and the Earth are extremely close in size and mass. Yet, only the Earth developed plate tectonics (ESA).

By contrast, the lithosphere of Venus does not form plates. This prevents carbon from being drawn into the mantle, and any nutrients below the surface are unreachable. Indeed, the surface of Venus has long been thought to be a single piece of immobile, stagnant lid, with no connection at all with the planet interior.

Not only does the lack of geological processes throttle Venus’s environment, the seemingly complete immobility of the lithosphere was extremely annoying.… Read more