Ice Volcanoes Discovered on Biggest Asteroid in Solar System

NASA finds wide implications in discovery on surface of Ceres.

Aerial view of landscape with glacier and volcanic ash. The asteroid Ceres is now believed to be covered in ice volcanoes. (Mint Images / Getty Images)
Aerial view of landscape with glacier and volcanic ash. The asteroid Ceres is now believed to be covered in ice volcanoes. (Mint Images / Getty Images)
Getty Images/Mint Images RF

Scientists have discovered ice volcanos — ones that spew ice rather than lava — on Ceres, the largest asteroid in the Solar System.  

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft captured images of the 588-mile-wide asteroid, and a study published in Nature Astronomy suggests that a new ice volcano has been forming on Ceres once every 50 million years. Though the ice volcanoes are less structurally important to Ceres than our very own lava volcanoes are to Earth, experts are postulating that they may be a factor in the erasure of craters on the surface.

One of the major implications of the study is the notion that other planets and asteroids could have similar ice volcanoes.

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