 A Voyager 1 image of Io, showing an active plume erupting from the volcano Loki. (NASA/JPL/USGS) On the volcanic moon Io, which orbits Jupiter, a big one is ready to blow. Loki Patera, a lake of lava that covers more than 8,000 square miles, will erupt this month, according to planetary scientists. Waves of lava regularly sweep across the molten sea. And, every so often, Loki belches a sulfuric plume miles high. The volcano appears to follow a predictable cycle. "We correctly predicted that the last eruption would occur in May of 2018," said Julie Rathbun, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, in a news release. Rathbun presented her latest observations of the volcano at conference in Geneva on Tuesday. Twenty years ago, the volcano erupted every 540 days, but that timeline has shortened: Now, Rathburn found, Loki is on schedule to erupt every 475 days. It is unclear why the rate of eruption has sped up. "Many things influence volcanic eruptions," Rathbun said, "including the rate of magma supply, the composition of the magma — particularly the presence of bubbles in the magma, the type of rock the volcano sits in, the fracture state of the rock, and many other issues." NASA considers Io to have the most volcanic activity of anywhere in the solar system. Its volcanic trigger, unlike that on Earth, is a gravitational tug-of-war; as Jupiter and its other nearby moons yank on Io, heat and pressure within the moon build into eruptions. When Loki spews its guts, the eruption is so massive, Rathbun said, per the New Scientist, Loki would "take out all of Southern California if it was on the Earth." |
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