It has been widely accepted for some time

Mar 29, 2010 09:42 GMT  ·  By
This global view of the surface of Venus is centered at 180 degrees east longitude
   This global view of the surface of Venus is centered at 180 degrees east longitude

Astronomers have always considered that Venus, the second planet from the Sun, is a celestial body that went through a massive upheaval millions of years ago. They thought that a series of catastrophic events prompted the reshaping of the planet's surface, to the extent that no less than 80 percent of its surface was buried under new crust. This massive resurfacing of the planet was believed to have taken place about 500 million years ago, ScienceDaily reports.

However, according to a recently-published report, it would appear that this view is flawed, and not very well rooted in scientific fact. The resurfacing theory implies that, when looking at the planet's surface, an observer shouldn't be able to notice any traces or records of events that occurred before the changes that took place half a billion years ago. The process that buried the old surface should by all accounts have erased most, if not all, data on how Venus looked before the changes.

But these data are currently being questioned by the results of a new global mapping investigation, which was conducted on ribbon-tessera terrain (RTT). These units, which are structurally very distinctive, are among the oldest surface discovered on the planet, having formed long before the catastrophic event. Using data from the NASA Magellan mission, researchers were recently able to delineate unit exposures, as well as structural trends, datasets that are all included in the geological RTT map. The tool charts the global RTT structure on Venus.

At a planetary level, these terrains exhibit patterns that would seem to indicate a rich geological history. According to planetary scientists, had the resurfacing occurred, such records would have not been found. But Venus reveals millions of square kilometers of records, each of them holding data on variable temporal evolutions that may be used to gain more insight on past events that affected the celestial body on a large scale. The new work was completed by experts at the Institute for Frontier Research on Earth Evolution at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, and details of the findings appear in the April issue of the respected scientific journal Geology.