×
GreekEnglish

×
  • Politics
  • Diaspora
  • World
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Culture
  • Sports
  • Cooking
Saturday
26
Jul 2025
weather symbol
Athens 31°C
  • Home
  • Politics
  • Economy
  • World
  • Diaspora
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Culture
  • Sports
  • Mediterranean Cooking
  • Weather
Contact follow Protothema:
Powered by Cloudevo
> World

Tantalizing discovery hints at possibility of life on Pluto

"We found a field of very large icy volcanoes that look nothing like anything else we have seen in the solar system"

Newsroom April 1 11:43

While scouring images taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft of Pluto’s surface, a team of astronomers made a tantalizing discovery.

“We found a field of very large icy volcanoes that look nothing like anything else we have seen in the solar system,” Kelsi Singer, senior research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and author of a new study published in the journal Nature Communications, told CNN.

The finding goes to show the tiny planet still has plenty of surprises in store for us — and could be more habitable for life previously believed, the researchers say.

The area covers 621 miles across an ancient impact basin. Two of its largest volcanic domes are roughly the size of Earth-based volcanos, including Mauna Loa in Hawaii, our world’s biggest volcano by volume.

Since the area itself doesn’t have any new impact craters, the researchers suggest the massive ice volcanoes aren’t actually that old and were formed as a result of residual heat emanating from the tiny planet’s interior.

“This means Pluto has more internal heat than we thought it would, which means we don’t fully understand how planetary bodies work,” Singer told CNN.

Rather than spectacularly erupting in an explosion of magma, these ice volcanoes vent a slurry of ice and water kind “like toothpaste,” she explained.

See Also:

Putin threatens to cut off gas supplies to Europe if they do not pay in Rubles

It’s an intriguing discovery that adds to existing theories about what scientists believe to be Pluto’s sizeable subsurface ocean. The volcanoes could be evidence that liquid water is closer to the surface than previously thought.

That could also influence the planet’s ability to harbor life — but it’s still a bit of a stretch.

>Related articles

What are the dirtiest objects in the house that we touch every day

From Crete to Lavrio and from there directly to detention centers: 247 migrants who entered illegally from Libya (videos-photos)

Protests against immigration in dozens of Polish cities

“There are still a lot of challenges for any organisms trying to survive there,” Singer told CNN. “They would still need some source of continual nutrients, and if the volcanism is episodic and thus the heat and water availability is variable, that is sometimes tough for organisms as well.”

The team is now excited to send a spacecraft outfitted with a radar to examine “what the volcanic plumbing looks like,” as Singer put it.

Source: Futurism

Ask me anything

Explore related questions

#discovery#life#planet#pluto#science#space#techology#world
> More World

Follow en.protothema.gr on Google News and be the first to know all the news

See all the latest News from Greece and the World, the moment they happen, at en.protothema.gr

> Latest Stories

One of the strongest heat waves of the last 15 years, says Kallianos

July 26, 2025

Dendias: If a conscript sailor is sent to a ship, only the… Archbishop doesn’t call

July 25, 2025

Sacha Baron Cohen’s dramatic transformation to play Marvel’s new villain – See photos

July 25, 2025

Swimming: Spyros Chrysikopoulos breaks all limits and earns a second Guinness World Record for Greece

July 25, 2025

Greece on Red Alert Saturday: Attica and 7 more regions at extreme wildfire risk – Explosive combination of heatwave, winds, and drought

July 25, 2025

The longest solar eclipse in history will plunge earth into darkness for 7 minutes

July 25, 2025

Analysis of University entry scores in Greece: The big climbers, the major drops, and where demand increased

July 25, 2025

Divers plant underwater Posidonia Gardens in Greece – See photos

July 25, 2025
All News

> Greece

One of the strongest heat waves of the last 15 years, says Kallianos

According to the meteorologist, there was a sense of extreme heat that reached 51.9 degrees Celsius in Halastra Thessaloniki on Friday at 14:10

July 26, 2025

Greece on Red Alert Saturday: Attica and 7 more regions at extreme wildfire risk – Explosive combination of heatwave, winds, and drought

July 25, 2025

Analysis of University entry scores in Greece: The big climbers, the major drops, and where demand increased

July 25, 2025

Divers plant underwater Posidonia Gardens in Greece – See photos

July 25, 2025

“We were in the sea for an hour and a half” – Canadair pilots describe what happened during the emergency landing

July 25, 2025
Homepage
PERSONAL DATA PROTECTION POLICY COOKIES POLICY TERM OF USE
Powered by Cloudevo
Copyright © 2025 Πρώτο Θέμα