A 1,100 km-wide, false-color radar view of Lavinia Planitia, one of the lowland regions on Venus where the lithosphere has fragmented into blocks (purple) delineated by belts of tectonic structures (yellow). Image credit:NC State University based upon NASA/JCL imagery

Venus’ surface is not a single, solid “lithosphere”, as once thought, but a patchwork of tectonic plates with similar activity to – but not the same as – those here on Earth, according to a new study out today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

The study shows that these tectonic plates jostle and bump against one another like pack ice on a frozen lake, suggesting Venus is still geologically active.

more: cosmosmagazine.com/space/astrophysics/the-surface-of-venus-is-geologically-active/