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Pluto Ice Volcanoes: NASA Releases Pictures Of Mountains That They Believe To Be Ice Volcanoes

By Louis Babcock
Published on: 12:54 PST, Nov 9, 2015

Does Pluto have ice volcanoes? Scientists believe so after research on the former planet was presented today. Pluto has been surprising the space community ever since the New Horizons spacecraft sent back images of Pluto a few months ago. One of the questions perplexing scientists is that in order for Pluto to have ice volcanoes, Pluto would need to be active geologically. Alan Stern, a scientist with the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado said, “the Pluto system is baffling us.”

The New Horizons scientists will be spending their week presenting 50 reports based on the information that New Horizons has sent back to Earth. The ice volcanoes of Pluto are the most interesting to scientists on this project. Two mountains on Pluto have got the attention of the scientists. The ice volcanoes, named Wright Mons and Piccard Mons, are over 100 miles around and several miles tall. The tops of these two mountains have depressions in them that are similar to the volcanoes on Earth and Mars. The volcanoes on Pluto would obviously not erupt with molten rock, as they do on our home planet. The volcanoes on Pluto would erupt with ice, nitrogen, methane, and ammonia. One of the New Horizons scientists, Oliver White, commented on the volcanoes.

“Nothing like this has ever been seen in the outer solar system. Whatever they are, they’re definitely weird.”

Other than the ice volcanoes, pictures from Pluto are showing that the surface has some very deep fractures in it. The largest of the fractures measures over 200 miles long with the top of the fracture being 2.5 miles higher than the base. For some perspective, the fractures on Pluto are two times as high as the walls of the Grand Canyon. Oliver White commented on another unexpected finding from Pluto.

“The fact that there are so many large faults in this part of Pluto indicates that the crust has experienced a major extension at some point in its history.”

Scientists have a theory about how Pluto developed the fractures that are being seen in the pictures from New Horizons. Scientists think Pluto had some radioactive elements that naturally decayed. The decay of these radioactive elements generated heat and the heat led to the fracture.

Not everyone is convinced that ice volcanoes exist, or were ever active, on Pluto. Jeff Moore, a planetary scientist at NASA, has given his thoughts.

“We’re not yet ready to announce we have found volcanic constructs at Pluto, but these sure look suspicious and we’re looking at them very closely.”

Oliver White also commented specifically on the ice volcanoes.

“If they are volcanic, then the summit depression would likely have formed via collapse as material is erupted from underneath. The strange hummocky texture of the mountain flanks may represent volcanic flows of some sort that have travelled down from the summit region and onto the plains beyond, but why they are hummocky, and what they are made of, we don’t yet know.”

The New Horizons spacecraft was launched on January 19, 2006. The primary mission was to investigate Pluto. Nine years after launch, New Horizons began its approach to Pluto. New Horizons mission was realized on July 14 when it began to do its research on Pluto. Now that Pluto has been investigated, New Horizons has a new mission. The spacecraft will now venture off further into deep space and begin to investigate the objects in the Kuiper Belt. New Horizons will not meet its next object until January 2019.

What are your thoughts about ice volcanoes on Pluto? Is it possible that the furthest known object in our Solar System could have similar geological phenomenon as Earth?

[Image via Shutterstock]

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