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Venus Needed Asteroid Impacts to Get its Volcanoes Going

Unlike Earth, Venus lacks the plate tectonics that give rise to volcanoes. But the surface of Venus looks far younger than other worlds, like Mars or the Moon, which means it does have volcanic activity that regularly resurfaces the planet. Because Venus is closer to the Sun, it came farther out in the Solar System and hit the planet at higher velocities. A new study suggests that early catastrophic asteroid impacts melted its mantle, leading to its flavor of volcanism.

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