Giant ice volcanoes appear on Pluto, possibly with life

Data sent back from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft during its flyby of Pluto in July 2015 revealed an interesting discovery about ice volcanoes. Scientists speculate that the last time they were active was probably about 100 to 200 million years ago.

Pluto's surface appears ice volcanoes.

The dwarf planet contains huge ice volcanoes, tens to hundreds of kilometers wide, some up to 7,000 meters high. The two largest ice volcanoes here are named by scientists as Wright Mons and Piccard Mons. While Wright Mons is nearly 5km high and 150km wide, Piccard Mons is about 7km high and 225km wide. Even, the mass of Wright Mons is equivalent to Mauna Loa (Hawaii), one of the largest volcanoes in the world.

These mountains do not have molten lava like volcanoes on Earth. Specifically, Kelsi Singer, a senior scientist at SwRI and author of this study, said: "We found a field of very large icy volcanoes that looked nothing like anything else. other than we've ever seen in the Solar System". They contain a mixture of mostly ice, partly ammonia, nitrogen, and methane.

However, this mixture has not been determined to exist in a liquid or solid state because it is too cold to lie on Pluto - which has an average temperature of about minus 233 degrees and orbits far from the Sun. God. The scientists determined it could be a paste or a solid with fluidity.

The eruptions of volcanoes on the dwarf planet are thought to be a reasonable explanation for the rough surface plates and the reason why the terrain here has been eroded tens of millions of years ago.

It is known that Pluto once had a subsurface ocean, the discovery of these ice volcanoes is also a signal that the subsurface ocean still exists. Thus, a place that has both water near the surface and not too cold, completely shows the hope of potential life.

Even so, all are just assumptions, scientists are continuing to study more about this phenomenon.