Astro Blog

By Elise Cutts , Science.  Excerpt: Towering tidal waves of lava could be rolling around hot alien worlds, researchers reported last week, here at the  Rocky Worlds conference  and in a  preprint  posted on arXiv this month. The Sun and Moon drive tides on Earth, but these tidal waves would be tugged up by the intense gravitational forces endured by planets in tight orbits around their stars. For instance, lava tidal waves on the blazing-hot exoplanet 55 Cancri e—a rocky world that orbits its star every 18 hours—could rise several hundred meters high and surge at the speed of a human sprinter, says Mohammad Farhat, a planetary scientist at the University of California (UC), Berkeley who presented the modeling study. ...Scientists often look for alien air by taking the temperatures of planets’ dayside hemispheres. The presence of an atmosphere would spread heat around to the nightside, making the dayside look cooler than expected for a bare rock. But if lava wave...

By Sarah Stanley , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Trapped in a gravitational push and pull between Jupiter and other Jovian moons, Io is constantly being  stretched and compressed . Heat generated by these contortions has melted  pockets  of the moon’s interior so much that Io is our solar system’s most volcanically active body. The  James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)  recently opened up new opportunities to get to know Io. Using data from its Near Infrared Spectrograph—which sees wavelengths corresponding to  different compositions and temperatures — de Pater et al.  have made new discoveries about Io’s volcanoes and atmosphere. The researchers first looked at Io  in November 2022  and found an extremely energetic volcanic eruption in the vicinity of the lava flow field Kanehekili Fluctus. These observations revealed, for the first time, that some volcanoes on Io emit an excited form of sulfur monoxide gas, confirming the team’s 2-decade-old hypoth...

Source:   By JoAnna Wendel, Earth & Space Science News (AGU) Excerpt:  Scientists find evidence that a 50-meter-deep pit on the Moon's surface could be a skylight opening to an intact lava tube tens of kilometers long. Lunar colonization isn’t mere science fiction anymore. Billionaires plan to send tourists on once-in-a-lifetime trips, and politicians say that they hope to colonize the Moon in the next few decades. There may even be ways for human colonists to harvest water from ice that may be permanently shadowed in certain caves. But where could a human colony actually live? The Moon has no atmosphere or magnetic field to shield it from solar radiation and micrometeorites that constantly rain onto its surface. That’s no environment for our squishy, earthling bodies. Scientists studying the Moon’s surface may have found the answer: shelter humans in lunar lava tubes. The Moon is covered in huge swaths of ancient basaltic lava flows. Earth’s volcanoes can also erupt s...

Source:    NASA RELEASE: 11-330 Excerpt: ...Scientists for decades had puzzled over whether Mercury had volcanic deposits on its surface. New data show a huge expanse of volcanic plains surrounding the planet's north polar region. These continuous smooth plains cover more than six percent of the planet's total surface. The deposits appear typical of flood lavas, or huge volumes of solidified molten rock similar to those found in the northwest United States. "If you imagine standing at the base of the Washington Monument, the top of the lavas would be something like 12 Washington Monuments above you," said James Head of Brown University…. Scientists also have discovered vents or openings measuring up to 16 miles (25 kilometers) across that appear to be the source of some of the large volume of very hot lava that has rushed across Mercury's surface….   www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/sep/HQ_11-330_Messenger_Images.html

Source:  Guy Webster, JPL News Excerpt:  They went looking for lava tubes on Mars — and found what may be a hole in the roof of a Martian cave. The 16 students in Dennis Mitchell's 7th-grade science class at Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, Calif., chose to study lava tubes, a common volcanic feature on Earth and Mars. It was their class project for the Mars Student Imaging Program (MSIP), …"The students developed a research project focused on finding the most common locations of lava tubes on Mars," Mitchell said. "Do they occur most often near the summit of a volcano, on its flanks, or the plains surrounding it?" To answer the question, the students examined more than 200 images of Mars taken with the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), an instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. …On their two targeted images the students found lava tubes, as they had hoped. And on the backup image, they also found a small, round black spot…. www.jpl...

Source:   NASA RELEASE: M10 - 081 Excerpt: For the first time, scientists have detected clear signs of recent lava flows on the surface of Venus. The observations reveal that volcanoes on Venus appeared to erupt between a few hundred years to 2.5 million years ago. This suggests the planet may still be geologically active, making Venus one of the few worlds in our solar system that has been volcanically active within the last 3 million years. The evidence comes from the European Space Agency's Venus Express mission, which has been in orbit around the planet since April 2006….See also  European Space Agency News Item . http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/apr/HQ_10-081_Venus_Volcanoes.html