By Deutsche Welle
30 Oct 2023, 18:07 PM EDT
Although it has been almost a decade since NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft visited Pluto, the dwarf planet continues to reveal itself as a surprisingly complex world.
Scientists studying spacecraft data about an unusual crater near a bright region on Pluto called Sputnik Planitia say they may have found a supervolcano that likely erupted just a few million years ago.
It may seem like a long time ago, but from a cosmic point of view it is quite recent considering that the solar system is more than 4.5 billion years old.
A hidden underground ocean?
However, instead of molten rock erupting from Earth’s volcanoes, the 44km-wide Kiladze crater appears to have spewed frozen lava onto Pluto’s surface in a process known as cryovolcanism.
This process, which also plays out on the moons of our solar system’s gas giants and has likely created other puzzling terrain on Pluto, is thought to spew water from Pluto’s hidden underground ocean onto its surface, reconfiguring it along millions of years.
The researchers analyzed images that New Horizons had taken of the Kiladze crater, located northeast of Sputnik Planitia. Although at first glance the crater looked similar to those left by meteorite impacts, it seemed to lack a central peak, which is what is expected from these geological phenomena.
It also appeared slightly elongated, consistent with movements caused by tectonic forces from within Pluto, according to the new study.
Most of Pluto’s surface is covered in methane and nitrogen ice, so the “clue that Kiladze is different” from the rest of Pluto’s surface is the strong presence of water ice around the crater, he told Space.com the study’s lead author, Dale Cruikshank, a professor at the University of Central Florida.
“The water ice stands out clearly from the methane ice that covers much of the planet’s surface.”
During Pluto’s 4.6 billion-year lifespan, scientists estimate that this methane ice blanket must have reached at least 14 meters thick. “Even a centimeter or two of this organic fog would mask the spectral signature of water ice that we observed,” Cruikshank said.
This layer would have formed in just three million years. This led Cruikshank and his team to conclude that Kiladze was “alive” only a few million years ago. Whatever the heat source, something seems to prevent Pluto’s subterranean ocean from freezing.
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