Unveiling Venus: The Shocking Discovery of Its Bizarre Pancake Volcanoes!

Venus, often called Earth’s “evil twin,” has some of the most unusual geological features in our solar system. One of the most intriguing is the pancake dome, massive circular volcanic formations that look like giant pancakes left on Venus’ scorching surface. Scientists have long thought these domes formed from thick lava slowly oozing out. However, new research suggests there’s more to the story.

Researchers took a closer look at one of the biggest domes, Narina Tholus, which is nearly 90 miles wide. They used radar data from NASA’s Magellan mission to create a detailed digital model. Their goal was to see how different types of lava and surface behaviors shaped this structure.

What they found was surprising. Lava alone couldn’t explain the dome’s unique flat top and steep edges. Instead, researchers discovered that the ability of Venus’ crust to bend under pressure, known as crustal flexure, played a key role. When there’s more flexure, the tops of the domes become flatter and the sides steeper.

This bending causes the lava to stack up instead of spreading out when it hits a soft, deformable crust—resulting in a classic pancake dome shape. Madison Borrelli, a postdoctoral researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology and lead author of the study, mentioned that the type of lava is not the only factor affecting dome formation.

Not just any lava creates these domes. The model worked best with ultra-dense, super-thick lava—about a trillion times thicker than ketchup and more than twice as dense as water. This lava flows very slowly, potentially taking hundreds of thousands of years to settle. It also explains the **crustal bulges** seen around some domes, which past studies had noted but not fully understood.

The way this heavy lava behaves when encountering a pliable crust leads to the flat summits and steep sides seen in Venus’s pancake domes. The study’s ability to replicate these features marks a significant step in understanding Venus’ volcanic history.

While the findings are promising, they’re based on just one dome. More extensive research will happen with upcoming missions like NASA’s VERITAS and DAVINCI, which are set to gather better topographical data and insights about Venus. These missions will explore thousands of other volcanic features and test whether similar interactions between crust and lava occur on the entire planet.

If these findings hold true, they could change our perspective on Venus’ evolution. Understanding why Venus developed so differently from Earth could offer valuable insights into both planets’ histories and futures.

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