Pluto is so far from the sun that it should be cold and lifeless, but images snapped by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft suggest it has a warm interior that fuels eruptions from strange ice volcanoes
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Isaac Herrera/Kelsi Singer
Pluto has huge ice volcanoes that may still be active to this day. A comprehensive analysis of data from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which flew past Pluto in 2015, has revealed that a large area of its surface – at least 180,000 square kilometres – is made up of ice that seeped out from underground viaThis area, surrounding two mountains called Wright Mons and Piccard Mons, is made up of undulating hummocks of ice that seem to be unique to Pluto.
Singer and her colleagues examined images, composition data and topographical maps of the area to determine how this unique terrain formed. They found that it was probably created via what is called effusive cryovolcanism, with liquid or relatively soft ice seeping out from underground to gradually create huge mountains and overlapping mounds. While
appear to be cryovolcanoes at least as large as the biggest active volcanoes on Earth, there is no evidence of explosive volcanic eruption, just slow, effusive seeping.
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