What’s Going On Inside Io, Jupiter’s Volcanic Moon?
Recent flybys of the fiery world refute a leading theory of its inner structure — and reveal how little is understood about geologically active moons. The post What’s Going On Inside Io, Jupiter’s Volcanic Moon? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Scott Bolton’s first encounter with Io took place in the summer of 1980, right after he graduated from college and started a job at NASA. The Voyager 1 spacecraft had flown past this moon of Jupiter, catching the first glimpse of active volcanism on a world other than Earth. Umbrella-shaped outbursts of magmatic matter rocketed into space from all over Io’s surface.
