Washington University in St. Louis | 2016 May 17
Novel mountain-building mechanism on Io may also have operated on early Earth
[img3="Mongibello Mons at sunset. The mountain rises 8.6 kilometers, or roughly 5 miles, above the volcanic plain. 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. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ of Arizona/Arizona State Univ)"]https://source.wustl.edu/wp-content/upl ... 60x488.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]Mountains aren’t the first thing that hit you when you look at images of Jupiter’s innermost moon, Io. But once you absorb the fact that the moon is slathered in sulfurous lava erupted from 400 active volcanoes, you might turn your attention to scattered bumps and lumps that turn out, on closer inspection, to be Io’s version of mountains.
There are about 100 of them, and they don’t look anything like the low lying volcanoes.
They also don’t look like mountains on our home world. 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. From space, they look rather like the blocky chips in the fancier kind of chocolate chip cookie.
For planetary geophysicists like William McKinnon, professor of earth and planetary science in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, the mountains of Io are an intriguing puzzle. By what process consistent with everything that is known about Io could these bizarre mountains have formed? ...
Mountain Building on Io Driven by Deep Faulting - Michael T. Bland, William B. McKinnon
- Nature Geoscience (online 16 May 2016) DOI: 10.1038/ngeo2711