Fire and Ice

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Follow geologist and cosmologist Natalie Starkey on a journey as she leads you on a tour of the Solar System's tallest, coldest, hottest, and weirdest volcanoes.Earth isn't the only planet to harbor volcanoes. In fact, the Milky Way is littered with them. Fire and Ice explores the Solar System's volcanoes and is an unusual look into how these cosmic features are made and whether they are the key to life on other planets.We tend to think of volcanoes as disgorging hot, molten lava and emitting huge, billowing clouds of incandescent ash. Some planets follow this pattern like Mars, which has the largest volcano in the Solar System and our own Moon which had volcanoes on its surface billions of years ago. But it isn't the same across the rest of the Solar System. Pluto, for example, erupts methane, ammonia, water, and carbon dioxide, substances that freeze to form mountain chains made of ice rather than rock. Fascinatingly, the volcanoes in the Milky Way can be some of the hottest and coldest places on its moons and planets.Whether they are formed of fire or ice, volcanoes are of huge importance for scientists trying to picture the inner workings of a planet or moon. Volcanoes dredge up materials from the depths and deliver them to the surface. The way in which they erupt and the products they generate can help scientists ponder bigger questions of the possibility of life elsewhere in the Solar System. From the red-hot summits of Jupiter's moon Io, to the coldest, icy carapace of Pluto, Natalie Starkey leads us on an incredible expedition throughout the cosmos to explore volcanoes and what they might mean for the future of our universe.