A group of dome-shaped ice volcanoes unlike anything else known in our solar system and possibly still active on Pluto has been identified using data from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, showing that this distant, icy world. It is more dynamic than previously known.
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A group of dome-shaped ice volcanoes unlike anything else known in our solar system and possibly still active on Pluto has been identified using data from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, showing that this distant, icy world. It is more dynamic than previously known.
Scientists said Tuesday that these ice volcanoes — which may number 10 or more — stand anywhere from six-tenths of a mile (1 kilometer) to 4-1/2 miles (7 kilometres). Unlike terrestrial volcanoes that spew gases and molten rock, the ice volcanoes of this dwarf planet spew large amounts of ice — apparently frozen water instead of some other frozen material — that might have the consistency of toothpaste, they said.
Features of the dwarf planet asteroid belt Ceres, Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan, Jupiter’s moon Europa and Neptune’s moon Triton have also been linked as freezing volcanoes. These are all different from Pluto, the researchers said, due to different surface conditions such as temperature and atmospheric pressure, as well as a different mixture of icy materials.
“Finding these features indicates that Pluto is more geologically active, or alive, than we previously thought,” said planetary scientist Kelsi Singer of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, lead author of the study published in the journal. Nature Communications.
“The combination of these geologically recent features, which cover a vast area and are likely made of water ice, is surprising because it requires more internal heat than we thought Pluto would at this point in its history,” Singer added.
Pluto, smaller than Earth’s moon and about 1,400 miles (2380 km) in diameter, orbits about 3.6 billion miles (5.8 billion km) from the sun, nearly 40 times Earth’s orbit. Its surface is characterized by plains, mountains, craters and valleys.
Images and data analyzed in the new study, obtained by New Horizons in 2015, validate previous hypotheses about volcanic eruptions on Pluto.
A heart-shaped region called Sputnik planum is seen in an enhanced view of Pluto in an undated image from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which flew past the dwarf planet in 2015.
(Source: VNA)
