[LINK] "Pluto's 'weird' mountains thought to be ice volcanoes"

[rfmcdonald]

The apparent discovery of cryovolcanism on Pluto, a world where liquid water is lava, is the subject of the Thomson Reuters report shared by the CBC. Pluto is definitely a dynamic world.

Among 50 reports that New Horizons scientists will present this week is a startling look at two mountains on the surface of Pluto, each measuring more than 160 kilometres in diameter and several kilometres in height. The tops of the mountains have depressions similar to volcanoes found on Mars and Earth.

"Nothing like this has ever been seen in the outer solar system," said New Horizons scientist Oliver White, with NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

Rather than spewing molten rock, volcanoes on Pluto would have released frozen water, and other ices such as nitrogen, ammonia or methane.

White admits the idea of volcanoes on Pluto, which is about 30 times farther from the sun than Earth, sounds crazy, "but it's the least crazy thing we can think of" to explain the mountains.

"Whatever they are, they're definitely weird," White said.