Volcanoes on Jupiter Moon Io Not Located Where They Were Supposed to Be

Scientists are saying they got the calculations all wrong for the several hundred volcanoes on Saturn's moon, Io.

According to new findings, Io's major volcanic activity is concentrated 30 to 60 degrees farther east than models of its internal heat profile suggested it would be --- indicating there's even more to the moon than previously thought.

"The unexpected eastward offset of the volcano locations is a clue that something is missing in our understanding of Io," research lead Christopher Hamilton, of the University of Maryland, said in a statement. "In a way, that's our most important result. Our understanding of tidal heat production and its relationship to surface volcanism is incomplete."

Io is the most volcanic body in our solar system, showing 25 times more activity than that on Earth. It's believed all the activity ends up resurfacing the moon every million years, a report on Space.com says.

Some of the moon's volcanoes blast sulfur plumes and other material hundreds of miles into space.

NASA scientists suspect Io's intense activity is caused by the gravitational tug-o-war between Jupiter and fellow moons Europa and Ganymede.

Traditional study formulas predict Io's volcanoes should be positioned above the spots inside the moon with the greatest amount of internal heating.

But Hamilton and his colleagues looked at data collected by several ground-based telescopes and spacecraft such as NASA's Voyager and Galileo probe and then then compared them to a detailed geologic map of Io scientists crafted last year. They found the standard thinking didn't apply to Io.

The reason for the difference between the anticipated orientation of the volcano and where they're actually positioned has yet to be determined --- though researchers suspect Io is rotating faster than what they think, or maybe the study models of Io's tidal heating may be missing some key components, like anomalies that could be caused by an underground ocean of magma.

"Our analysis supports a global subsurface magma ocean scenario as one possible explanation for the offset between predicted and observed volcano locations on Io," Hamilton said.

But, "Io's magma ocean would not be like the oceans on Earth. Instead of being a completely fluid layer, Io's magma ocean would probably be more like a sponge with at least 20 percent silicate melt within a matrix of slowly deformable rock," he said.