Comparison of the Roughness Scaling of the Surface Topography of Earth and Venus

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Gavin E. Crooks, Yaneer Bar-Yam, Sergey V. Buldyrev, and H. Eugene Stanley, Comparison of the roughness scaling of the surface topography of Earth and Venus, arXiv:1809.02457 [cond-mat.stat-mech] (September 7, 2018).

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(also on arXiv)

Abstract

We report the scaling behavior of the Earth and Venus over a wider range of length scales than reported by previous researchers. All landscapes (not only mountains) together follow a consistent scaling behavior, demonstrating a crossover between highly correlated (smooth) behavior at short length scales (with a scaling exponent α=1) and self-affine behavior at long length scales (α=0.4). The self-affine behavior at long scales is achieved on Earth above 10 km and on Venus above 50 km.