The acid yellow moon Io that orbits Jupiter may be less than 30% the size of Earth, but is considered the most volcanic body in our solar system. As demonstrated by explosive news from NASA on Tuesday: Io’s southern hemisphere contains a hotspot of volcanic activity so massive, it is larger than Lake Superior.
Detected by the Juno probe's Italian Space Agency’s Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM), Io’s volcanic region produces enough energy that it contains the equivalent to six times the total output of all power plants on Earth. While Io’s surface includes at least 400 volcanoes with varying levels of activity, none even come close to what astronomers observed with the new feature. Indeed, the fact that there were so many hot spots spaced so closely together suggests that there is a vast underground magma chamber system.
