A team of researchers from NASA’s New Horizons mission has discovered evidence on Pluto of what appear to be two gigantic cryovolcanoes or ice volcanoes (geological structures from which ice and water emerge where the ice would be like the rocks that volcanoes expel terrestrial and water like magma).
The two candidates for cryovolcanoes, provisionally baptized as Wright Mons (located south of the Sputnik Planum plain, a mountain about 4 kilometers high and with a central depression that evokes a giant caldera) and Piccard Mons (located even further south and with 5.6 kilometers above the surface) would be the first large ice volcanoes in the solar system, according to Jeff Moore, a NASA scientist.
According to experts, these ice mounds suggest that volcanoes are made of ice and water , since nitrogen and methane are too soft to carry such a heavy load at such a height. On its ridges, each peak houses a central crater , an appearance that certainly makes one think of volcanoes on Earth.
What could be generating enough heat inside Pluto to create a volcano on the surface? At the moment it is unknown but the possibilities are diverse; for example, that there was a layer of ammonia water under the surface, causing the hotter material to rise and generate this geological activity.
Be that as it may, Pluto is turning out to be a fascinating dwarf planet and experts do not rule out that there are even more cryovolcanoes that the New Horizons spacecraft has failed to reach in its wake. “It’s hard to imagine how fast our view of Pluto and its moons are evolving as a new data source every week . Pluto is becoming a star in the solar system , ”says study leader Alan Stern.
The results have been presented at the annual meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society in National Harbor, Maryland (USA).
