How to Form Io's Mountains? Just Squeeze!

Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io is full of mysteries, including how its mountains were formed. They have puzzled scientists for decades because they look nothing like mountains on Earth.

At home, we see mountains grow in ranges that can stretch across thousands of miles. But on Io, the more than 100 cataloged mountains mostly grow in isolation. What mysterious tectonic forces are at play here?

Io is so active that it’s hard to look at the tectonics from space; molten lava coats the surface at an incredible rate of five inches per decade. So to answer the question, a new study used simulations to figure things out.

A close-up of Mongibello Mons at sunset. The mountain is about 8.6 kilometers (5 miles) high. Io has mountains that are as high as 10 miles above the plain, which is taller than Earth mountains.

“The planetary community has thought for a while that Io’s mountains might be a function of the fact that it is continuously erupting lava over the entire sphere,” lead author William McKinnon, a planetary scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, said in a statement. He co-wrote a paper about this in 2001.

“All that lava spewed on the surfaces pushes downward and, as it descends, there’s a space problem because Io is a sphere, so you end up with compressive forces that increase with depth.”

The new work simulates this hypothesis, but focuses on the fact that Io’s compression gets stronger as you go deeper into the moon. This creates strain in a single fracture created deep inside of Io and then erupting to the surface, creating a cliff. The scientists also suggest this could explain why so many recent eruptions are found near the mountains.

The south polar region of Io as seen by Voyager 1. This includes the mountain Haemus Mons, which is 10 kilometers (32,000 feet) high. It is visible at bottom.

“The compressive forces deep in the crust are incredibly high,” McKinnon said. “When these faults breach the surface, those forces are released, and the entire stress environment around the fault changes, providing a pathway for magma to erupt.”

Read more at Discovery News