Mud volcanoes spring from the dwarf planet Ceres

Nothing is normal about Ceres, let alone about its mud volcanoes.

In a new research published in Astronomy of nature, a large team of astronomers presented a new, strange worldview of our solar system. It seems that Ceres has experienced billions of years of activity, including random volcanic jets, but of a type not seen anywhere else in the solar system.

Ceres is the largest world of the asteroid belt and is considered as a remaining proto-planet, or the kind of small worlds that have served as the basis for the planets we see today. There is ample evidence that Ceres may once have had a frozen ocean and the tantalizing clues of a geologically active history.

Ceres even seems to have a form of volcanism. There are two types of volcanism in the solar system, usually: the types of magmatic eruptions observed on Earth and the moon of Jupiter Io, where the heated rock rises from the heart to the surface. And then, there is the type of volcanism observed on Europa and Enceladus, where large expanses of icy water erupt. Scientists call this cryovolcanism.

Ceres mud volcanoes

Hanna Sizemore, research scientist and author of the journal Planetary Science Institute, says that Ceres volcanoes are a strange mixture of both. "The big difference on Ceres is that you're in this hybrid between the internal rock system and the frozen outdoor solar system," she says. This means that although water may be a driving mechanism for volcanoes, the actual material could include rock, salt and heated materials from within Ceres, which is both a rocky and icy world . When these volcanoes explode, "it would probably look like an extrusion of lava on the earth, but it would be mud that would escape from cracks or cracks on the surface," says Sizemore.

Sizemore says that a new cryovolcano appears on Ceres about once every 50 million years, as indicated by data from the Dawn spacecraft, which has been circling around Ceres for about three years. The craft has seen a series of "domes" that dot the world and have similar proportions to those of the mountains, but consist of ice that has settled since the end of their period of volcanic activity, leveling them a little.