by Lucas Regal
Recently, scientists have found evidence of “Ice Volcanoes” on the dwarf planet Pluto. This is exactly what it sounds like. These mountains look like volcanoes, but instead of spewing molten lava, it erupts with ice in a process known as cryovolcanism.
So what does this mean? Scientists from NASA say that if a volcano has the ability to erupt, that means that there is a molten fuel source required. This means that pluto is an icy shell that was fairly recently, hot and liquid.
These eruptions are supposedly magnificent. “The icy lava may slowly extrude from a dome’s vent or fissure as a gelid, mucilaginous mass — something comparable to Silly Putty but made of one or multiple frozen chemical compounds” (New York Times).
Sadly for the human race, this does not mean that Pluto is a potential home for us, or that we are any closer to stepping foot on the dwarf planet. This finding is simply beneficial to our research in the Solar system, and helps us know more about what the Universe is and how it has changed over time. The next step would be to find out why these eruptions are happening, how the reaction occurs, and what it could mean for us.
