Why does Earth have plate tectonics while Venus keeps a single lid?
In plain words
Hot convecting planets naturally grow a stiff outer shell that does not break into plates. Something weakens Earth's shell enough to let plates form, and it is unclear what that is.
Precise statement
Convection with strongly temperature-dependent viscosity generically produces a stagnant lid. Identify the lithospheric weakening mechanism (water, grain-size reduction and damage, pore fluids) and the planetary parameters (surface temperature, water content, mass, interior temperature) that place Earth in the mobile-lid regime and Venus outside it. An answer is a regime diagram from a rheology calibrated on experiments that places both planets correctly.
What would settle it
Three-dimensional spherical convection with lab-calibrated weakening rheology that reproduces plate-like Earth and lid-like Venus with no tuned parameters.
Related problems
- More general than Can lab-based rock rheology produce plate-like convection?