5 Most Amazing Geological Structures in the Solar System

Suara.com – Amazing geological features are not only limited to Earth, but there are many structures in solar system no less impressive.

Reported from Independent, Tuesday (7/9/2021), here are five geological structure the most impressive in the solar system:

1. The grandest canyon

The most spectacular canyon belongs to Mars which is located on Olympus Mons and is called Valles Marineris.

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Over 3,000 km, the canyon is hundreds of km wide and up to eight km deep.

The canyon was probably initiated by a fracture when a nearby volcanic region, called the Tharsis, began to bulge upward but was widened and deepened by flooding more than three billion years ago.

2. Venus fold mountains

Venus is nearly the same size, mass, and density as Earth, leading geologists to wonder why it lacks plate tectonics like Earth’s and why Venus has relatively little active volcanism.

However, Venus has some aspects of geology that are familiar to Earth.

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One of them, the northern boundary of the plateau is named Ovda Region which look very much like folding mountains on Earth such as the Appalachian.

3. The largest impact basin in the solar system

Mercury has a 1.550 km diameter Kaloris basin that was formed by a large asteroid impact about 3.5 billion years ago and made its surface flooded with lava.

Following that, a series of explosive eruptions blasted holes through the hardened lava. Particles of volcanic ash that are ejected spread over a distance of tens of kilometers.

It causes a basin called Agwo Facula. Scientists suspect that there have actually been several explosive eruptions, possibly over a long period of time.

In other words, the gas-forming volatiles are repeatedly available in Mercury’s magma.

4. The highest cliff

Uranus has a 7 km high cliff called Verona Rupes and is often described as the highest cliff in the solar system.

Interestingly, Verona Rupes is anything but vertical. The only image that experts have is that of Voyager 2, which was taken during the 1986 Uranus flyby.

It reveals geological faults where a block of the planet’s outermost crust is moving downward against an adjacent block.

Experts predict the slope of this feature may be less than 45 degrees.

5. Titan’s coastline

One of Saturn’s moons, Titan, has a shoreline-like feature on Earth called Ligeia Mare.

The feature is actually a lake composed of liquid hydrocarbons on Titan and has a diameter of 500 km and a surface area of ​​about 100,000 km.

This intricately crooked coastline looks like Oman’s Musandam peninsula, on the southern side of the Strait of Hormuz.

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