Pluto has ice volcanoes

In 2015, NASA's New Horizons mission made a flyby of everyone's favorite dwarf planet, Pluto. It
captured the most detailed pictures of the icy world's surface humanity had ever seen and scientists
have spent the past several years scouring the data to uncover what makes Pluto tick.

Looking at an area southwest of Sputnik Planitia, researchers found a series of dome-like structures that
could be explained by volcanic activity spewing material onto Pluto's surface. The only catch is those
volcanoes are ice cold.

On Earth, volcanoes are famous for spitting liquid rock and gas from beneath the surface onto the land
and into the air. Pluto, perched nearer the edge of the solar system, is home to a wholly different type
of tectonic activity. In order for ice volcanoes to exist on Pluto, heat from the dwarf planet's interior
would need to melt ices and push them to the surface, suggesting that Pluto has been geologically alive.

Finding geological activity of any kind on Pluto adds an exciting dimension to a world that was once
thought to be a cold, dead rock. Moreover, an analysis of the impact craters in the area suggests that
the activity is relatively recent.

The more we learn about Pluto, the clearer it becomes that it represents an alien world right in our own
stellar backyard.