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This view of the dwarf planet Ceres shows the mountain and probably the "ice volcano" Ahuna Mons on the right edge and the luminous points of the Occator crater on the lower left. New research suggests that several ice volcanoes once punctuated the surface of Ceres. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA)
A new study shows that dozens of ice volcanoes litter the surface of the dwarf planet, Ceres, billions of years ago.
Unlike volcanoes on Earth, ice volcanoes (also called cryovolcanoes) pull ice water and other pieces of ice.
"Ceres is the only plausible cryovolcanic world to have been orbited by a spacecraft so far, making it the best opportunity to test the importance of cryovolcanism on the bodies of the outer solar system and compare its effects to volcanism." silicate on the planets bed.
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Lead author of the study, Michael Sori, a global scientist at the University of Arizona at Tucson, told Space.com that Ceres ice volcanoes were "the best opportunity to learn about similarities and differences between cryovolcanism and regular volcanism. "
The study was published in the journal Astronomy of nature.
Ice volcanoes are rare in the solar system, but have been spotted on some celestial bodies, such as the moons of Saturn, Enceladus and Titan, as well as Pluto. We do not know much about them, which makes them extremely interesting for researchers.
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"Cryovolcanoes are among the most intriguing features of the solar system," said Rosaly Lopes, a research scientist with Cassini's radar team, about Saturn's moon cryovolcano, Titan. "To put them in perspective – if Vesuvius had been a cryovolcano, its lava would have frozen the inhabitants of Pompeii."
The Ceres ice volcanoes, however, are largely dormant and eroded for about a billion years, one of which was discovered in 2015, Ahuna Mons, the largest ice volcano on the dwarf planet.
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Ceres is the largest member of the asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter. Its diameter is about 585 miles, inside the orbit of Neptune and is the 33rd largest known body of the solar system, having been discovered in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi.
Although ice volcanoes have helped shape Ceres into what it is today, it is not a process as "dominant" as the volcanoes on Earth, the Moon, Mars or Venus, Sori told Space .com. "The dark spots you see on the moon at night are huge volcanic plains, and we do not see anything like that of Ceres."
Follow Chris Ciaccia on Twitter @Chris_Ciaccia
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