A look back at the Keynote #2.
The observations acquired from space and Soviet landers strongly suggest that Venus’ crust is primarily basaltic (akin to Earth’s oceanic crust). Yet, some of the most intriguing features of Venus are its crustal plateaus, characterized by heavily deformed terrains, which cover about 7% of its surface and have long been suggested to bear a superficial resemblance to Earth’s continental crust and mountain ranges.
On Earth, melting of the mantle overlying subduction zones (in the presence of hydrous fluids) followed by fractional crystallization is believed to be the primary mechanism generating the large volumes of intermediate to felsic rocks (rich in SiO2) that make up the continental crust (e.g., granites). The possibility that Venus’ highland plateaus are dominated by intermediate to felsic rocks will be reevaluated by the EnVision and Veritas missions, in the hope of providing evidence for the presence of water oceans and, therefore, habitable conditions in Venus’ distant past.
The speaker discussed alternative igneous processes that could have produced intermediate to felsic rocks on Venus and the “geologic observations” that would be needed to suggest that more hospitable conditions prevailed on early Venus.
- Keynote by Max Collinet (UNIVERSEH – UNamur)
- Panel: Eric Tschirhart (Uni.lu)
- Moderator: Anne-Sophie Libert (UNamur)
- Keynote in English
Max Collinet is an assistant professor of Geology (chargé de cours) at UNamur. His research focuses on the role of magmatism in planetary differentiation and evolution, using high-temperature experiments and thermodynamic modeling. He completed his master at Laboratoire Magmas et Volcans (Clermont-Ferrand) and earned his PhD at MIT in 2019. Before joining UNamur in 2023, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), where he contributed to the interpretation of geophysical data from the Martian InSight lander.
Eric Tschirhart is Full Professor of Physiology at the University of Luxembourg, Special Advisor to the Rector, coordinator of the Erasmus+ ‘UNIVERSEH European University‘. Eric Tschirhart holds a PhD in Pharmacology and an MBA. After working in the pharmaceutical industry and in public research institutions, he joined the University of Luxembourg in 2002 and contributed to the development of Life Sciences in Luxembourg, before holding a series of management positions at the University of Luxembourg in research, finance & administration, technology transfer, fundraising and academicorganisation as Vice-President. He also has recurrent experience in the evaluation of higher education institutions. Professor Eric Tschirhart still teaches physiology in Medical and Life Sciences programmes and has supervised PhD candidates recurrently. He published in the fields of physiology, pharmacology, drug development, and space immunology.
