Since the New Horizons satellite reached Pluto a few months ago the scientific world has been on the edge of their seats waiting for any new information. The latest piece of science information is well, interesting. Yesterday Alan Stern & Co. presented a mountainous map at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society‘s Division of Planetary Sciences. And it looks very familiar.
The blue spot in the middle of the informally-named Piccard Mons and that belly button-looking depression in neighboring Wright Mons are areas of low elevation. On our home planet this kind of formation points to one thing – a volcano! But Pluto is really, really far from the Sun right? Isn’t it a ice planet?
If these indentations are indeed volcanoes, they won’t be of the magma kind. These would be cryovolcanoes. Ice volcanoes! The New Horizons team thinks that these structures could have formed when a slurry of water ice, nitrogen, ammonia, or methane erupted from beneath the dwarf planet‘s surface. Frodo would have a totally different experience carrying the One Ring to this bad boy.
Source: Wired
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