Venus is a planet that is similar to Earth in terms of some important planetary parameters (size, mass, position in the solar system, presence of atmosphere) and different in terms of other, equally important ones (absence of an intrinsic magnetic field, large atmospheric mass, carbon dioxide composition of the atmosphere, lack of water, very high surface pressure and temperature). The surface ...

massive than all human structures combined and are sculpted in greater detail than a Baroque palace. The world’s tallest pinnacle—Mount Everest in the Himalayas— reaches 8,848 meters, or about 15 times higher than anything people have ever built. Not surprisingly, such spectacular topography has evoked awe and inspired artists and adventurers throughout human existence. Recent research has led ...

massive than all human structures combined and are sculpted in greater detail than a Baroque palace. The world’s tallest pinnacle—Mount Everest in the Himalayas— reaches 8,848 meters, or about 15 times higher than anything people have ever built. Not surprisingly, such spectacular topography has evoked awe and inspired artists and adventurers throughout human existence. Recent research has led ...

[1] The scaling of plate tectonic convection is investigated by simulating thermal convection with pseudoplastic rheology and strongly temperature‐dependent viscosity. The effect of mantle melting is also explored with additional depth‐dependent viscosity. Heat flow scaling can be constructed with only two parameters, the internal Rayleigh number and the lithospheric viscosity contrast, the lat...

The notorious ~60° bend separating the Hawaiian and Emperor chains marked a prominent change in the motion of the Pacific plate at ~47 Ma (million years ago), but the origin of that change remains an outstanding controversy that bears on the nature of major plate reorganizations. Lesser known but equally significant is a conundrum posed by the pre-bend (~80 to 47 Ma) motion of the Pacific plate...