Nature: Compared with Mars, Mercury, and the Moon, Venus shows little surface cratering. Vulcanism and other active crustal processes must have rubbed out the ancient craters, but when? Previous theories posited a violent phase of Venusian vulcanism that ended no later than 300 million years ago. Nature‘s Eugenie Samuel Reich reports that those theories are being challenged in the light of recent observations of active volcanoes made by the European Space Agency’s Venus Express spacecraft.
The finding that the Saturnian moon may host layers of icy slush instead of a global ocean could change how planetary scientists think about other icy moons as well.
Modeling the shapes of tree branches, neurons, and blood vessels is a thorny problem, but researchers have just discovered that much of the math has already been done.
January 29, 2026 12:52 PM
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