(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) The solar system's most volcanic body, the Jupiter moon Io, has been in turmoil for at least 4.57 billion years, right back to its birth and the infancy of the sun.

Yet as they reported today in the journal Science, Io looks to have more-or-less been continuously erupting for billions of years—perhaps even 4.5 billion years, or for as long as the solar ...

Flybys of Jupiter’s fiery moon Io, carried out by NASA’s Juno spacecraft, are helping to solve the enduring mystery of why the small moon is the most volcanically active body in our solar system.

New Map Reveals Secrets of Io, the Solar System’s Most Volcanic Moon The best-yet map of active volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io hints at a hidden magma ocean—and more ...

But those metals had to be absorbed while material was still flying around in the chaotic, cluttered early solar system — and 4.35 billion years ago, that material was already gone.