STARSET_MirrorIce Volcanoes Reshape Pluto and Hint at a Hidden Ocean
After years of close examination of data from New Horizons, scientists think they have spotted evidence of recently erupted ice lava, a sign that Pluto is home to cryovolcanoes that were active in the immediate geologic past.
经过多年对新视野数据的仔细研究，科学家们认为他们已经发现了最近爆发的冰熔岩的证据，这表明冥王星是过去地质时期活跃的冰火山的家园。
“We tried to find some other way to explain it, but we just really couldn’t,” said Kelsi Singer, a senior research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., and an author of the study, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.
科罗拉多州博尔德西南研究所的高级研究科学家凯尔希·辛格说：“我们试图找到其他解释方法，但我们真的做不到。”他是这项研究的作者，该研究于周二发表在《自然通讯》杂志上。
If the team is correct, the implications are significant. Any erupting volcano requires a molten fuel source. If these ice lava deposits are young, then the underworld just below this spot on Pluto’s icy shell was, at least to some degree, hot and liquid very recently. And such a finding gives credence to the hypothesis that present-day Pluto is an ocean world, however improbable that may seem for a tiny, icy orb so far from the sun.
如果团队研究成果是正确的，那么其意义是重大的。任何喷发的火山都需要熔融的燃料源。如果这些冰熔岩沉积物是年轻的，那么冥王星冰壳上这一点下方的地下世界最近至少在某种程度上是热的和液态的。这一发现证实了今天的冥王星是一个海洋世界的假设，尽管这对于一个离太阳如此遥远的微小冰球来说似乎不太可能。
Read more at The New York Times
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