Pluto's Bizarre, Heart-Shaped Crater Could Be Powerful Cryovolcano [Study]

Pluto, which was demoted into a dwarf planet, has a huge crater. According to a new study, the bizarre crater could be a powerful cryovolcano.

Pluto Crater: A Super Cryovolcano?

Our neighbor Pluto is home to a large, strange crater. However, a new study suggests that the crater may be a dormant frozen supervolcano. The Kiladze Crater, believed to be a potent cryovolcano, is a 27-mile wide formation found in the heart-shaped Sputnik Planitia region of Pluto's surface.

According to the researchers, Kiladze is probably fairly young relative to the universe because the volcanic activity started a few million years ago. This is due to the absence of the surface layer buildup on the rest of the planet.

The study, which has not yet undergone formal peer review, hypothesizes that the Kiladze crater, which the New Horizons spacecraft observed during its 2015 visit to Pluto, is a cryovolcano. It was visible in water ice on photos taken by New Horizons, which was remarkable given that the rest of the dwarf planet is mostly coated in frozen methane and nitrogen ice. The water ice in the crater also contains ammonia, as shown by spectroscopy. Unlike an impact crater, a tectonically generated crater is more similar to Kiladze's look.

The authors of the paper suggested that Kiladze is a "supervolcano" in which one or more explosive events have dispersed more than 1000 km3 of icy cryomagma that erupted from the interior onto the surface. This is because of the caldera's size and the large scale of the surrounding distribution of water ice.

As it would require warmth from the dwarf planet, if Kiladze is, in fact, a cryovolcano, it would be an amazing discovery for scientists.

Dale Cruikshank, a NASA Ames Research Center planetary scientist and co-author of the paper, said they don't know if there is a subsurface global ocean of water plus various chemicals or if there are simply pockets of water plus chemicals left over from the time Pluto formed and had a hot interior. Additionally, Pluto's internal heat is also anticipated to cause volcanism in some places at the surface. The next generation of planetary scientists must unravel this puzzle.

What Is a Cryovolcano?

On Earth, volcanoes are associated with eruptions of fiery rock and ashes. On other planets, a different type of volcano exists called ice volcanoes or cryovolcanoes.

Dr. Rosaly Lopes, a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said cryovolcanoes release different materials when they erupt. Instead of rocks, ashes, and gases, cryovolcanoes release ice, water, and other materials like methane and ammonia.

Lopes said cryovolcanoes have ice crust and a layer of water or something like ammonia. When the liquid comes to the surface, they call it cryovolcanism, which means "cold volcanism."

Although the materials differ from terrestrial volcanoes, the process is comparable. Lopes said they still call it "volcanism because it's a process that brings material from the interior of the satellite to the surface."

Dr. Randy Kirk, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey's Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona, relates a phenomenon that occurs on Earth to the icy plumes. He compares it to a geyser that shoots steam into space as it reaches escape velocity.

According to Kirk and Lopes, Triton, the biggest of Neptune's 13 moons, has historical cryovolcanism evidence. The smooth plains, mounds, and rock pits that NASA's Voyager 2 mission discovered make up Triton's surface. Many scientists believe that a cryovolcano's frozen flows contributed to the landscape's formation.

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