Cryovolcano - The Ice Volcano

"Cryovolcanoes" are the one of the most intriguing features in solar system. Generally we have heard that volcanoes are hot but after reading this article you will know that volcanoes are not only hot. Ironically the name Volcano comes from Roman God Vulcan, God of Fire. Generally the volcanoes are formed due to the hot molten materials which when added to water leads to the generation of new rocks. But it is not true for outer space, ice volcanoes are formed on the cold planets and does not contains any rock forming materials. It mainly consist of water, ammonia, methane which are generally known as cryomagma. Think back in the classrooms how the hot volcanoes worked, Cryovolcanoes work similarly.

The first Cryovolcanoes was found in 1989 by the Voyager 2 space craft from the Neptune’s greatest moon known as Triton. These are very volatile material as the methane is converted into liquid form when heated at -182 ℃. Due to this the methane is found to be in gaseous state on earth but on cold planets like Pluto it is found in solid state. Sometimes due to tectonic movements or other natural calamities the temperature of the methane gets raised due to this, and all the volatile substance gets into the liquid form hence they try to move in upward direction and the all volatile material are ejected and as the temperature of the materials is low the volcanic eruptions is in the form of liquid ice. Ceres is the moon which consist of more numbers of cryovolcanos as the methane and water are found maximum in solid form. According to NASA’s Cassini spacecraft research the oldest volcano is known as “Ahuna mons “which is found on the Ceres. These volcanoes have life’s as the get flattened up due to time and gravity this phenomenon is known as “Viscous Relaxation”. This physical term indicates the massive ice converts into liquid due to time and gravity same as the glaciers on the earth. But as the Ahuna mons is the oldest cryovolcano and it is still steady. The question arises in your mind is that, does viscous relaxation does not affects this volcano. Here is the reason due to the special geometric structure of the volcanic mountain the viscous relaxation is acting in very nominal amount which leads to slow degration of solid ice. Titan, a moon of Saturn also contains some cryovolcanoes as the surface of Titan consist of the ammonia and has the sea of frost methane and as it is far away from Sun its temperature is low due to this favourable condition Titan also consists of cryovolcanoes. NASA’s Cassini mission has found out that the surface of Titan is active.

Cryovolcano on Titan “DoomMons”

The biggest cryovolcano is found on Pluto known as “Wright mons” which was named after the Wright Brothers. This volcano is two and half miles tall and it is spread across 90 miles.