BBC Learning English
Words in the News
17
th
December 2010
‘Ice volcano’ found on Saturn’s moon
Words in the News
© British Broadcasting Corporation 2010
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bbclearningenglish.com
Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is made up mainly of water, ice and mountains. Now scientists
think they’ve found a mountain that spews lava made not of molten rock, but ice. The
observation was announced at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
Jonathan Amos reports.
Titan is a mysterious world. Because it's shrouded in a thick, oily haze, it's extremely hard to
identify anything at the moon with confidence. But with temperatures that plunge to minus
180 Celsius at the surface, researchers had suspected it might have ice volcanoes.
And now the Cassini probe has spotted a 1,500m-high mountain with a deep pit in it, and
what looks like a flow of material nearby.
Scientists can only speculate what sort of material a cryo-volcano might erupt, but the
complex chemistry at Titan suggests it could be a slushy water-ice containing ammonia.
If there are a lot of carbon molecules present, the lava could even look like a softened asphalt,
candle wax or even polyethylene.
The team which discovered the mountain have dubbed it "the Rose".
Jonathan Amos, BBC News
