“People have been squeezing planetary interiors forever to see what happens,” McKinnon says, “but we’re applying the squeeze differently, because on Io compression increases with depth the surface is not in compression. The numerical experiment described in Nature Geoscience tests this hypothesis through simulation. McKinnon and his former student, Paul Schenk, now at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, wrote a paper explaining this hypothesis in 2001. “All that lava spewed on the surfaces pushes downward and, as it descends, there’s a space problem because Io is a sphere, so you end up with compressive forces that increase with depth.” “The planetary community has thought for a while that Io’s mountains might be a function of the fact that it is continuously erupting lava over the entire sphere,” McKinnon says. Bland, a research space scientist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center, publish a computer model that is able to make numerical mountains that look much like the jutting rock slabs on Io. In the journal Nature Geoscience, McKinnon and Michael T. Since Io buries the evidence of its tectonic processes under a continually refreshed coating of lava (adding 5 inches a decade), the scientists have turned increasingly to computer simulations to solve the problem.
By what process consistent with everything that is known about Io could these bizarre mountains have formed? Louis, the mountains an intriguing puzzle. (Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)įor planetary geophysicists like William McKinnon, professor of earth and planetary science at Washington University in St. Io is home to some of the highest mountains in the solar system, including some that tower 10 miles high, far higher than any mountain on Earth. The mountain rises 8.6 kilometers, or roughly 5 miles, above the volcanic plain. While we favor majestic ranges stretching from horizon to horizon, the mountains on Io are isolated peaks of great height that jut up out of nowhere. They also don’t look like mountains-at least as we know them on Earth. There are about 100 of them, and they don’t look anything like the low-lying volcanoes. Those “lumps” are Io’s version of mountains. Once you absorb the fact that Jupiter’s moon Io is slathered in sulfurous lava that erupted from 400 active volcanoes, you might notice it’s a little lumpy.
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