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Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Metal volcanoes have not been seen erupting on another world. But large-scale experiments show how a hypothetical eruption of molten metal could move: in the tested setup, metal flowed about ten times faster than silicate lava, often through thin, braided channels beneath it. Those patterns may help scientists interpret planetary landscapes, including possible metal-rich settings such as asteroid 16 Psyche—but they are not evidence that Psyche has had volcanoes.
What is ferrovolcanism?
Ferrovolcanism is a predicted kind of volcanism involving molten metal rather than the silicate melts familiar from volcanoes on Earth. Arianna Soldati and coauthors described it as “yet to be directly observed” in their 2021 Nature Communications paper. The idea raises a striking planetary question: what might an eruption look like if its lava were metal-rich?
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What the experiments revealed
Soldati and colleagues investigated that question with large-scale metallic and silicate lava-flow experiments at the Syracuse University Lava Project. In the tested conditions, the metallic melt was denser and less viscous than the silicate flow, and moved about ten times faster. One documented laboratory flow had a metallic velocity of approximately 0.41 m/s, compared with about 0.04 m/s for the silicate lava. These are measurements from the experimental setup, not predicted speeds for an asteroid or another planet.
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Outbyte Driver Updater FREEFix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →The two materials did not simply travel together as one blended stream. The researchers found that the metallic flow was largely decoupled from the silicate flow: metal traveled mainly in braided channels beneath the silicate and emerged near its front.
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How might metal-lava landscapes differ?
The experiment suggests a possible visual contrast with familiar silicate lava flows. Under the conditions tested, metal-rich flows could leave low-relief, thin, braided features, rather than the thicker, more compact forms associated with silicate flows. Such shapes are proposed clues scientists might look for when interpreting a planetary surface; they are not confirmed traces of an eruption on another world.
| Feature | Silicate flow | Metallic flow in the experiment |
|---|---|---|
| Material properties relevant to movement | Less dense and more viscous than the metallic melt in the tested comparison. | Denser and less viscous than the silicate melt in the tested comparison. |
| Relative movement | About 0.04 m/s in one documented laboratory flow. | About 0.41 m/s in that documented laboratory flow; the experiment reported metallic flow moving about ten times faster under its tested conditions. |
| Flow pattern | Thicker, more compact flows in the proposed comparison. | Thin, braided channels, often beneath the silicate flow and breaking out near its front. |
| What the evidence describes | Behavior in a large-scale laboratory experiment. | Behavior in a large-scale laboratory experiment; possible planetary features remain hypothetical. |
What does this have to do with asteroid 16 Psyche?
The paper discusses possible relevance to 16 Psyche, a metal-rich asteroid. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory describes the Psyche mission as a study of an asteroid whose surface contains substantial metal, with the aim of improving understanding of iron cores and planet formation. That makes Psyche relevant to questions about metallic materials in planetary settings, but it does not establish that the asteroid has had metal volcanoes.
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Applying the laboratory findings to a world such as Psyche involves assumptions about the material’s composition, gravity, temperature and surface conditions. A braided pattern that resembles an experimental flow would be a candidate feature to investigate, not proof on its own that ferrovolcanism occurred.
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What the study does—and does not—show
- It shows how metallic and silicate melts behaved in the particular large-scale experimental conditions.
- It supports hypotheses about the speed, channeling and possible surface forms of metallic flows.
- It does not show that researchers observed a metal eruption on Psyche or any other planetary body.
- It does not establish that any specific planetary surface feature was formed by ferrovolcanism.
The study, “Imagining and constraining ferrovolcanic eruptions and landscapes through large-scale experiments,” was published in Nature Communications on March 17, 2021. Its central contribution is experimental: it offers a way to think about what metal-rich eruptions might do, while leaving their occurrence beyond Earth unconfirmed.
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