Greetings! Please Share & Subcribe.
U.S. scientists Tuesday said they had found possible ice volcanoes on Saturn's giant moon, Titan, at an American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
Unlike volcanoes on earth, ice volcanoes may spew ice and hydrocarbons instead of molten rock.
The latest evidence comes from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Cassini spacecraft, which found two peaks more than 3,000 feet high with deep volcanic craters and finger-like flows, local media reported.
After analyzing the new Cassini radar images, Randolph Kirk, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and his colleagues created a 3-D map of Sotra Facula on Titan.
"When we look at our new 3-D map of Sotra Facula, we are struck by its resemblance to volcanoes like Mount Etna in Italy, Laki in Iceland and even some small volcanic cones and flows near my hometown of Flagstaff," Kirk told local media.
Data from Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer revealed the lobed flows had a composition different from the surrounding surface.Topography and surface composition data have enabled scientists to make the best case yet in the outer solar system for an Earth-like volcano landform that erupts in ice, according to local media.
Scientists have been debating for years whether ice volcanoes exist on ice-rich moons, and assume some kind of subterranean geological activity can melt part of the satellite's icy interior and send slushy ice or other materials through an opening in the surface.
"It's possible the mountains are tectonic in origin, but the interpretation of cryovolcano is a much simpler, more consistent explanation," Jeffrey Kargel, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, Tucson, was quoted as saying by local media.
Scientists have no evidence of current activity at Sotra, but they plan to monitor the area.
Cassini was launched by NASA on Oct. 15, 1997, and began orbiting Saturn in 2004.
Saturn has more than 60 known moons, with Titan being the largest.
XINHUA
0 Comments