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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Faster than the Fastest production car of the world

Image
One thing about which almost every sports car freak is crazy is their mind-blowing speed. It doesn't matter if you could ever achieve that speed on road or not but you'd always desire to boast those numbers among your friends and groups. So fellas, what do you think? Which car should be the fastest car?  Well, you might be thinking about the  Bugatti Veyron Super-sport or the newly unveiled Chiron. But actually, it's not the case. T hey hold the record of the fastest production car according to the Guinness Book of World Records officially but the “ Hennessey Venom GT ” by Hennessey Performance Engineering is unofficially the fastest car at a whopping speed of “270.49 MPH”. Yeah you read it right. It's 435.11 km/h. To make a claim for Guinness Record for fastest production car the company has to at least make 30 cars, while the company has decided to make only 29 cars which is a bit funny. And this company does not make the whole car, they just tune the engine and
Read more

Muscle Cars - The raw and untamed beasts

Image
Almost every youth on the planet loves speed, obviously after the “Fast & Furious” and “Need for Speed” movies. But when it comes to defining the Muscle car, the things get a bit complicated. As the name suggests, the built up of this automobile is taken care, not only from within but also from the exterior parts. As per American norms, a muscle car can be defined as a two door; rear wheel drive, mid-size cars with powerful engines. These cars are considered as high-performance vehicles compared to other normal ones. Comparison between a muscle car and a sports car:- ·         Engine :- A muscle car uses a V8 engine while an engine of a sports car may be small but is quick. Thus the engine of muscle car is powerful while the same of sports car is quick ·         Bodies :- The muscle cars are made up with lots of curves while a sports car is built with an aim of reducing the force that is applied on car due to air resistance. ·         The torque produced in
Read more

Hydrogen Fuel - The Fuel of the Future

Image
                                                                               As we often hear in our day to day lives, the availability of fuels is decreasing day by day and the biggest concern in automobile is pollution due to these fuels, so the new idea and search comes for zero pollution as well as the better availability, renewability and efficiency too. Although, many researches are going on for the alternate fuels but one of the most promising fuel source is Hydrogen which can produce an abundant amount of energy and that too with zero emissions. Hydrogen may seem to be very abundant but pure hydrogen is not naturally available on earth in large quantity. So, electrolysis and steam-methane reforming processes are methods to produce hydrogen. In electrolysis, the electricity is passed through water to separate the hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Obtaining hydrogen from this process leads to low cost. In steam-methane reforming process, hydrogen is extracted from methan
Read more