A new study suggests that the eruption of ice volcanoes is unique to the dwarf planet and the solar system.
NASA's New Horizons mission took detailed photos of the surface of the dwarf planet and the largest object in the Kuiper Belt. A new analysis examines images of an area containing two main mounds that scientists have proposed are ice volcanoes. The researchers concluded that the surface around these mounds was formed by recent activity of ice volcanoes.
The finding raises the possibility that the volcanoes may still be active and that liquid water, or something like it, flows under the surface of the planet. Recent activity means that there is more heat in the interior of the dwarf planet. The scientists say their work could raise the possibility of life existing under the surface of the dwarf planet.
There are 7 solar system worlds where the weather is crazy.
The researchers analyzed photographs of a region dominated by two large mounds, which they think are cryovolcanoes. Wright Mons is a mount 2.5 to 3 miles high and about 90 miles wide, while Piccard Mons is about 7 miles high and 250 miles wide.
The one on Wright Mons is about as deep as the mount is high. There are many parts of the area that have an unusual, lumpy orhummocky appearance. The two main mounds could have been formed from smaller mounds accumulated over time.
Kelsi Singer, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado and the lead author of the study, told Space.com that there was no other area on the dwarf planet that looked like this one.
The area has few impact craters, which indicates that the surface was formed recently. The area is probably less than 200 million years old, based on the lack of craters.
In some ways, cryovolcanoes are similar to volcanoes on Earth, since much of the surface is made of ice and temperatures are far below water. Liquid water, or something like it which is at least partially fluid or mobile, would be like magma on Earth, coming up to the surface after an eruption and freezing, or hardening, into a solid.
It could be more like a slushy thing where you have some liquid and some ice, or it could even be more like a flowing solid, Singer said.
She said that we all know that ice can flow because we have glaciers.
Radiogenic heat created by the decay of radioactive elements in the dwarf planet is likely to be the cause of the cryovolcanic activity on Pluto. A similar phenomenon is also one of the sources of heat in the Earth's interior. Scientists call geologic activity like that on Pluto, which can still create features like faults in rock, but does not have tectonic plates.
There are similarities between the shield volcanoes on Earth and the cryovolcanoes of Pluto, which are low-profile volcanoes which form from the steady accumulating of lava flows into rounded structures. Think of the Hawaiian island volcanoes, not Mount Saint Helens or Vesuvius. Shield volcanoes are usually formed from very liquid lava.
A caldera is a depression in the middle of a volcano, formed when a volcano collapses into a void. The depression on Wright Mons is so deep that the volcano would have had to lose half of its volume to be like the shield volcano in Hawaii.
Researchers don't know a lot about these features, how they were formed, and how cryovolcanism works. There is a chance that life could still exist on the icy surface of the dwarf planet if there is liquid water beneath it.
There might be some heat and liquid water closer to the surface, but there are still some big challenges.
A paper about the research was published in the journal Nature Communications.
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