Pluto has a huge field of bumpy ice created by massive volcanoes

By Leah Crane.

There are huge ice volcanoes that may still be active. A comprehensive analysis of data from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which flew past Pluto in 2015, has shown that a large area of its surface is made up of ice that seeped out from underground.

This area is made up of hummocks of ice that seem to be unique to the solar system.

Singer and her colleagues looked at images, composition data and topographical maps of the area to figure out how this terrain formed. They found that it was probably created by effusive cryovolcanism, in which liquid or soft ice is released from the underground to create mountains and mounds.