There are more than 200 moons in the solar system, but none quite like Io, the third largest of Jupiter’s 80 moons. Io is really, really volcanic. In fact, it’s peppered with so many hundreds of powerful active volcanoes that there must be something unusual beneath its crust.
That something could be a thick moonwide layer of molten rock—or a “subsurface magma ocean,” according to a new study published in the Planetary Science Journal on Nov. 16 from Yoshinori Miyazaki and David Stevenson, planetary scientists at the California Institute of Technology.
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That possible super-hot sea of melted rock—which is unique in the solar system—could harbor secrets, weird mechanisms for forming moons and planets, and even recipes for exotic alien life. Only further scrutiny of the 2,200-mile-diameter moon will tell.
Read more: yahoo
