Pluto, new research has found, has a landscape sculpted by ice volcanoes, of a type and scale seen nowhere else in the Solar System. To the south-west of the Sputnik Planitia, so much slush has erupted from below the surface of Pluto that mountains of ice stand up to 7 kilometers high."One of the regions with very few impact craters is dominated by enormous rises with hummocky flanks.
"The existence of these massive features suggests Pluto's interior structure and evolution allows for either enhanced retention of heat or more heat overall than was anticipated before New Horizons." As the name indicates, rather than hot molten lava, ice volcanoes erupt with slushy water slurries of volatile compounds such as ammonia and methane. Once they emerge into frigid atmospheric conditions above ground, they freeze and build up surface monuments, much like lava can create volcanic mountains and calderas, just… well, colder.
The first hint of ice volcanoes, known as cryovolcanism, was detected on Pluto in 2015, when the New Horizons probe made its epic flyby of our Solar System's erstwhile ninth planet. Never before had scientists had access to such a wealth of data on the Kuiper Belt's largest known inhabitant; and, not far from the heart-shaped flatland of the Sputnik Planitia, some features stood out as truly interesting.
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