A supervolcano on Pluto as large as the one in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, may have erupted and spewed ice over the dwarf planet鈥檚 surface just a few million years ago, according to an analysis of a crater found by NASA鈥檚 New Horizons spacecraft.
Ice volcanoes on Pluto were first identified in images taken by New Horizons when it reached the object in 2015. 快猫短视频s think these volcanoes eject lumps of frozen water, instead of pumping out lava as we see on Earth. Such icy chunks were also spotted on Pluto鈥檚 surface during the mission.
at NASA Ames Research Center in California and his colleagues think Pluto鈥檚 Kiladze crater might be a dead or dormant supervolcano comparable to the Yellowstone caldera, the second-largest volcano on Earth. 鈥淭he idea of a supervolcano is loosely defined as having ejected 1000 cubic kilometres in one or more eruptions,鈥� says Cruikshank. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 a colossal amount of material.鈥�
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The first clue that Kiladze crater is volcanic in origin is that a large portion of its rim, which is around 44 kilometres across, appears to have been shaped by a series of collapses over time, says Cruikshank. Using height data and assuming that it was filled with water ice, Cruikshank and his team calculated that a volcano at Kiladze would have expelled at least 912 cubic kilometres of material.
Cruikshank and his team also looked at the area around the crater and found that it contained a lot of ammonia-rich water ice, which is thought to be found under Pluto鈥檚 surface. The dwarf planet鈥檚 atmosphere blankets everything on its surface in a metres-thick layer of frozen methane, so if a probe detected water ice, then something must have put it there, says Cruikshank. It must also have been relatively recent 鈥� in the order of millions of years 鈥� to not be covered up again by methane.
Understanding the nature of Kiladze could tell us about whether Pluto has a vast liquid ocean underneath its surface, or just patches of water here and there, says Cruikshank.
It鈥檚 equally probable that the crater was formed by an enormous asteroid smashing into Pluto, or even that such a collision triggered a volcanic eruption by rupturing a build-up of frozen magma under its surface, says at the Open University, UK. Researchers will need a more detailed comparative study between Kiladze and Pluto鈥檚 other craters before they can label it a supervolcano, he says.
arXiv
