The accretion of new material during Pluto’s formation may have generated enough heat to create a liquid ocean that has persisted beneath an icy crust to the present day, despite the dwarf planet’s orbit far from the sun in the cold outer reaches of the solar system.
Original story from UCSC Newscenter.
Francis Nimmo, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.
Original story from UCSC Newscenter.
PhysOrg — “The magma in Io’s crust takes time to flow,” said Francis Nimmo, a geophysicist at the University of California Santa Cruz and co-author on the new paper. “If you squeeze and stretch the crust rapidly, nothing happens; but if you squeeze and stretch it more slowly, the magma has time to move far enough to fill a volcanic conduit, causing an eruption. It’s similar to the way you can run on wet sand, but if you walk slowly your feet sink.”
