Title: The Quest to Understanding Why Earth Has Plate Tectonics and Venus
and Mars Do Not

Speaker: Scott King, Purdue University

Abstract.  Plate Tectonics has fundamentally changed the way Earth
Scientists view the Earth, yet more than 30 years after the idea of
plate tectonics changed geologic thinking, numerical models of the
deformation of the planet still can not explain some of the
first-order observations without using ad hoc assumptions.  The
equations for creeping flow in a planetary interior are similar to
those most Applied Mathematicians are familiar with, but there are
some important differences that creep in (no pun intended) due to the
scale of a planet (e.g., gravity is no longer constant).  In addition,
as Shakespear said, "It's a Bawdy Planet".