A batch of dome-shaped ice volcanoes that look unlike anything else known in our solar system and might still be active have been identified on Pluto using data from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, showing that the remote, frigid world is more dynamic than previously known.
Scientists on Tuesday said that the cryovolcanoes — which number perhaps 10 or more — are from 1km to 7km tall.
Unlike volcanoes on Earth that spew gases and molten rock, the dwarf planet’s cryovolcanoes extrude large amounts of ice, apparently frozen water rather than some other frozen material, that might have the consistency of toothpaste, they said.
Photo: AFP / NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute / Isaac Herrera / Kelsi Singer
Features on the dwarf planet Ceres, Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan, Jupiter’s moon Europa and Neptune’s moon Triton also have been pegged as cryovolcanoes.
However, those differ from Pluto’s, owing to different surface conditions such as temperature and atmospheric pressure, as well as different mixes of icy materials, the researchers said.
“Finding these features does indicate that Pluto is more active, or geologically alive, than we previously thought it would be,” 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 features being geologically recent, covering a vast area and most likely being made of water ice is surprising because it requires more internal heat than we thought Pluto would have at this stage of its history,” Singer said.
Pluto, which is smaller than Earth’s moon and has a diameter of about 2,380km, orbits about 5.8 billion kilometers from the sun, about 40 times farther than Earth’s orbit. Its surface features plains, mountains, craters and valleys.
Images and data analyzed obtained in 2015 by New Horizons that are in the new study validated previous hypotheses about cryovolcanism on Pluto.
The study found not only extensive evidence for cryovolcanism, but also that it has been long-lived, not a single episode, said Southwest Research Institute planetary scientist Alan Stern, the New Horizons principal investigator and study coauthor.
“What’s most fascinating about Pluto is that it’s so complex — as complex as the Earth or Mars, despite its smaller size and high distance from the sun,” Stern said. “This was a real surprise from the New Horizons flyby, and the new result about cryovolcanism re-emphasizes this in a dramatic way.”
The researchers analyzed an area southwest of Sputnik Planitia, Pluto’s large heart-shaped basin filled with nitrogen ice. They found large domes 30km to 100km across, sometimes combining to form more complex shaped structures.
An elevation called Wright Mons, one of the tallest, might have formed from several volcanic domes merging, yielding a shape unlike any Earth volcanoes.
Although shaped differently, it is similar in size to Hawaii’s Mauna Loa.
Based on an absence of impact craters, it appears the cryovolcanoes on Pluto are relatively recent.
“It is possible these processes are ongoing even in the present day,” Singer said.
Pluto has a lot of active geology, including flowing nitrogen ice glaciers and a cycle in which nitrogen ice vaporizes during the day and condenses back to ice at night — a process that constantly changes its surface.
“Pluto is a geological wonderland,” Singer said.
“Many areas of Pluto are completely different from each other. If you just had a few pieces of a puzzle of Pluto you would have no idea what the other areas looked like,” she said.
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