Field of ice volcanoes: A discovery on Pluto that bears no resemblance to anything else in the solar system
According to a new scientific study, images of Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons mission have revealed a new surprise: ice volcanoes.
“We found a field of very large ice volcanoes that don’t look like anything we’ve seen in the solar system,” said Kelsey Singer, a senior scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado.
According to Singer, what distinguishes these ice volcanoes from others in our solar system is the fact that they do not have calderas at the top (geological shapes that volcanoes create when they collapse on their own), which suggests that ice volcanoes have been active relatively recently.
The region of Pluto, where ice volcanoes were found, is located southwest of the ice cover Sputnik Planitija, which covers an ancient basin that stretches 1,000 kilometers in diameter.
The two largest ice volcanoes are known as Wright Mons and Picard Mons. Wright Mons is four to five kilometers high and covers 150 square kilometers, while Picard Mons reaches about seven kilometers in height and 225 kilometers in width.
Wright Mons is considered to be similar in volume to the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii, which is one of the largest volcanoes on Earth.
The spacecraft “New Horizons” flew over the dwarf planet and its moons in July 2015, and the data it collected at that time still redefine everything that scientists know about Pluto.
Pluto was granted the status of a dwarf planet in 2006, when the International Astronomical Union created a new definition of a planet, and this celestial body did not meet the criteria.
The discovery of these ice volcanoes could suggest that the subterranean ocean on Pluto still exists and that liquid water could be close to the surface.
Since, according to scientists, this dwarf planet has a warmer interior than previously believed, the findings raise intriguing questions about the potential habitability of this celestial body.
