Ice volcanoes spotted on Pluto, suggest internal heat source

Science.com ^ | 9 Nov, 2015 | Eric Hand

[MtnClimber]

NATIONAL HARBOR, MARYLAND—Researchers on NASA’s New Horizons mission have discovered evidence on Pluto for what appears to be two cryovolcanoes—volcanoes built out of frozen ice that once oozed molten ice from the inside of the dwarf planet. The discovery points to an internal heat source that, at some point in Pluto’s past, drove the melting of interior reservoirs of volatile ices, such as nitrogen and methane, that then erupted at the surface. It also suggests that the cryovolcanoes were a way for Pluto to periodically rejuvenate surface supplies of these volatile ices, which sublimate into the thin atmosphere and are eventually lost to space.

The features would be the first large ice volcanoes in the solar system, says Jeff Moore, a New Horizons scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, though the team is not yet willing to say the discovery is definite. “These sure look very suspicious and we’re looking at them closely.” The results were announced here today in a series of talks and an accompanying press conference at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

The two features, provisionally named Wright Mons and Piccard Mons, are mounds of ice with rims that tower as high as 5 or 6 kilometers above the surface. They are located just outside the southern tip of Sputnik Planum, the smooth, bright “heart” of Pluto. The rims, more than 150 kilometers across, encircle pits that are nearly as deep as the mountains are tall. The shape was unmistakably volcanolike, says Oliver White, a New Horizons scientist also at Ames Research Center.

[SunkenCiv]

Unless it’s not.

[MtnClimber]

I know. Ice under heat and pressure could become more plastic, but not melt. Like the way glaciers flow.