What the heck is a cryovolcano anyway? NASA announces discovery of ice volcanoes on Pluto

New Horizons spots possible volcanoes on Pluto.

What the heck is a cryovolcvano and why does Pluto appear to have them? These are questions that NASA is attempting to answer following surprising new information revealed by the New Horizons flyby mission. At least two cryovolcanoes have been spotted and NASA thinks there could be more. What powers these features remains a mystery.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - NASA scientists pouring over data from the New Horizons mission have discovered two cryovolcanoes, or ice volcanoes, as they are being called in the news. The objects are located on the southern border of Pluton's heart-shaped feature, near the planet's South Pole.

The two cryovolcanoes have been informally named, Wright Mons and Picard Mons.

NASA released the information during its 47th Annual Meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences, being held in Harbor, Maryland this week. Images have been released to showcase the discovery.

But what the heck is a cryovolcano anyway? A cryovolcano is a volcano that erupts ice, or another material, such as ammonia, methane, nitrogen or even water, instead of molten rock as on Earth. Ice volcanoes have been discovered on other bodies of the Solar System such as on Neptune's moon, Triton and on Saturn's Enceladus.

The features themselves are unsurprising, but for their existence on Pluto. Pluto is a small, minor planet, smaller even than Earth's moon. The tiny world is not thought to still have a molten core hot enough to power geologic activity such as this at the surface. Moons like Titan and Enceladus have molten cores because they are constantly squeezed by the tidal forces of their host planets, Neptune and Saturn respectively.

Scientists are unsure what could be powering the cryovolcanoes on Pluto, but they are sure of what they are looking at. They note the cryovolcanoes have a "shield" appearance, have holes in their summits, and evidence of eruption on their flanks. The area around the suspected cryovolcanoes is also relatively crater-free, suggesting they are recently-formed geologic features, which could have arose within the past several million years.

It's obvious that Pluto is a dynamic world, with a thin atmosphere that develops as the minor planet makes its closest approach to the Sun every 248 years. As the planet swings away from the Sun, its atmosphere freezes and coats the surface as ice. Pluto's orbit around the Sun is also inclined by 21 degrees, meaning it does not orbit in the same plane as all the other planets.

Unfortunately, there are no further missions to Pluto planed, so there will be no way to follow up on New Horizons' discoveries anytime soon. New data from the mission will continue to trickle in however, and a wealth of new discoveries and surprises is expected as New Horizons spends the next year streaming its collected data back to Earth.

New Horizons will visit the Kuiper Belt next, a band of mysterious, icy bodies that orbit the Sun far beyond the orbit of Pluto. Those observations will begin in 2019 with a flyby of 2014 MU, a Kuiper Belt object.

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