/sci/ - Science & Math

What planet or moon has the weirdest geology in your opinion?

I nominate Venus because it has so many types of features unique to itself.

>has widespread volcanism but no plate tectonics
>as a result heat builds up in the mantle until it reaches a critical level that triggers an episode of planetwide hypervolcanism that resurfaces the entire planet's surface with fresh lava
>these global resurfacing episodes occur on average every 500 million years, and it is unknown when the next one is due

>lower atmosphere is mostly CO2 in a supercritical high pressure state thats almost dense enough to swim through

>Venus has several weird types of volcanoes that are found nowhere else in the solar system
>"pancake" volcanoes that can be up to 50km wide but only a few hundred meters high caused by cool but highly viscous lava slowly oozing out through a hole in the crust
>"arachnoid" volcanoes that are similar to volcanic domes on Earth and Mars but develop cracks in a radial pattern resembling an enormous spider
"coronae" are giant titty-shaped volcanoes surrounded by concentric crack rings

>Venus, like Mars, was thought to possess liquid water in the ancient past, but if it did there would be no remaining evidence on the surface due to the periodic mass resurfacing events

IMO Venus is a bad place for space mining both because all of the heavier elements in the crust were recycled down into the mantle from repeated resurfacing events, and that delta V requirements to launch from the surface are almost as high as Earth, which requires massive complex and expensive launch systems to escape.

Venus without clouds

>>10048001
Venus at least seems to have plenty of elements and energy. Mars is a meme, real goal is Venus.

I hate how Venus is always depicted without its atmosphere. Lame!

What would be the best way to terraform Venus? Would it be possible to somehow dump most of the atmosphere into space?

>>7424290
forgot pic. Look at how little craters there are compared to Pluto. As I said, it could be because Venus is the most active planet in the solar system, or that the thick atmosphere breaks apart most projectiles, or that it just has less projectiles. Most likely a combination of all three, remember Pluto has yet to "clear it's neighborhood" so we should expect more collisions. Earth is LESS active than Venus yet there aren't as many visible craters, so it's larger size and/or moon must play a role.

Also, Jupiter's moons are around Pluto's size, but probably wouldn't encounter as many collisions as a KBO. Saturn's moons, however, might encounter more collisions. I'm don't know too much about objects like Europa or Titan, but I do know they are vastly different from Pluto. I'm interested to know the exact relation between all the factors in the papers on Pluto's data that are still to come.

>>6182407
But Venus has its own host of problems. How would you work around the hellish environment?

Hey /sci/.

So everyone seems to be hyped about a manned mission to Mars to the point where NASA is sucking the planet's dick. I'm worried however, that the journey there might be too perilous to make on the first attempt. I've had the idea that NASA should fund a manned rendezvous mission to Venus, as a "practice" mission to Mars. Venus is much closer to Earth than Mars is, and in fact, it has seen more flybys (usually in the form of gravity assists) than any other planet in the solar system. It also has stronger gravity making an orbital insertion easier.

So the spacecraft or whatever would insert itself into low Venus orbit and loiter there for a few days before returning to Earth. A manned landing on the Surface of Venus would be virtually impossible with current life support technology, so that would be skipped in the mission. Yet, the craft might as well send an unmanned landing vehicle to the surface to take pictures and measurements and shit.

So would this actually be a plausible idea? It's basically just to gain experience for interplanetary travel. No manned craft has been farther than the Moon as of Yet, and the Earth's gravitational control sphere is 5 to 6 times the radius of the Moon's orbit.

When all of our resoruces are depleted, we will change the orbit of Earth and Venus, moving the earth to a place between mars and Jupiter, and placing Venus in our Earth's orbit.

Source: my dog

Could /sci/ please explain global warming in a coherent, easy to understand way?