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by marcoalopez 252 days ago
Interestingly, Earth scientists have long understood that plate tectonics is highly unlikely to exist on a rocky planet without water (to put it simply, water is needed to deform the Earth's upper mantle), given all that this entails. If this hypothesis is true, plate tectonics as such should be post-collision.
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You can see this in Venus. No water and no plate tectonics. Instead you get heat buildup under the crust until there's a cataclysmic overturn event.
What about the Mars scientists?