Giant ice volcanoes identified on Pluto

Scientists said on Tuesday that giant ice volcanoes were active recently on the dwarf planet.

According to a new study in the Nature Communications journal, the observation that was made by analyzing images taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, suggests that the interior of Pluto was hotter than previously thought.

Kelsi Singer is a study author and planetary scientist at Colorado's Southwest Research Institute.

Ice volcanoes were already thought to be on several chilly moons in the solar system, but they are different from anything else.

The features on Pluto are the only large icy volcanoes on the planet and they have a unique texture.

Singer said it was difficult to know when the ice volcanoes were formed, but they could be as young as a few hundred million years old.

She said that the region does not have impact craters, which means that it is still in the process of forming.

It is extremely significant.

Lynnae Quick, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said the findings were extremely significant.

She told Agence France-Presse that they suggest that a small body like Pluto, which should have lost much of its internal heat long ago, was able to hold onto enough energy to facilitate widespread geological activity.

The findings will cause us to reexamine the possibilities for the maintenance of liquid water on small, icy worlds that are far from the Sun.

David Rothery, professor of planetary geosciences at The Open University, said they don't know what caused these icy volcanoes to erupt.

One of the structures, the Wright Mons, is about three miles high and 150 kilometers wide, and has the same volume as the largest volcano on Earth, the Mauna Loa in Hawaii.

Rothery told Agence France-Presse that he had been to Mauna Loa and experienced how large it was.

This makes me realize how small Wright Mons is compared to our own world.

The analyzed images were taken when the New Horizons spaceship passed by the dwarf planet in 2015.

It gave the greatest insight into the dwarf planet, which was previously thought to be the farthest planet from the Sun.

Singer said that she loved the idea that there was so much left to learn about the solar system.

Every time we go somewhere new, we find new things that we didn't expect.

More information: Kelsi Singer, Large-scale cryovolcanic resurfacing on Pluto, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-29056-3. www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-29056-3 , www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-29056-3 Journal information: Nature Communications

There will be a new year in 2022.

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