Ceres takes life an ice volcano at a time

Every year throughout its 4.5-billion-year life, ice volcanoes on the dwarf planet Ceres generate enough material on average to fill a movie theater, according to a new study led by the University of Arizona.

The study, led by UA planetary scientist Michael Sori, marks the first time a rate of cryovolcanic activity has been calculated from observations, and its findings help solve a mystery about Ceres's missing mountains.

Discovered 2015 by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, the 3-mile-tall ice volcano Ahuna Mons rises in solitude over the surface of Ceres. Still geologically young, the mountain is at most 200 million years old, meaning that—though it is no longer erupting—it was active in the recent past.

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Credit: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Ceres.

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A cryovolcano (colloquially known as an ice volcano) is a theoretical type of volcano that erupts volatiles such as water, ammonia or methane, instead of molten rock.

Collectively referred to as cryomagma or ice-volcanic melt, these substances are usually liquids and can form plumes, but can also be in vapour form. After eruption, cryomagma is expected to condense to a solid form when exposed to the very low surrounding temperature. Cryovolcanoes may potentially form on icy moons and other objects with abundant water past the Solar System's snow line.

A number of features have been identified as possible cryovolcanoes on Pluto, Titan and Ceres. In addition, although they are not known to form volcanoes, ice geysers have been observed on Enceladus and potentially Triton.

Our solar system’s largest asteroid is covered in ice volcanos.
Scientists recently analyzed images of Ceres, a rock 588 miles wide, roughly the size of Montana, and found that the asteroid is covered in ice volcanoes, and estimated that a new one probably appeared every 50 million years in the rock’s history.

The research demonstrates that Ceres is an important body for studying ice volcanoes in general, since other celestial bodies in the outer Solar System, like Europa, Titan, and even Pluto, might have ice volcanoes, too.