Space
Pluto's Icy Heart Is Still Beating, Strange Polygonal Shapes Spotted
Elaine Hannah
First Posted: Jun 03, 2016 04:10 AM EDT
Scientists have discovered that Pluto's heart informally known as Sputnik Planum appears to be continuously youthful. It was emptied of impact craters and was seen speckled with mysterious polygonal shapes between six and 24 miles in diameter.
The planet's heart has no impact craters, which means that there is some kind of geological process that coated Pluto's Sputnik Planum fairly recently. The broken frozen heart of Pluto might still be beating because it replenishes itself with new ice always. This makes the planet having one of the youngest surfaces in the solar system, according to a pair of papers that were printed in Nature.
William B. McKinnon of Washington University said that for the first time, they can determine what these strange welts on the icy surface of Pluto really are, according to Washington Post. The researchers said that the mysterious polygons of Pluto's heart are the rising bubbles that are created by some type of heating system below. In the entire Sputnik Planum, there is a layer of mostly nitrogen ice that is being heated so slowly by the slight convection of slowly decaying radioactive elements inside the dwarf planet.
The researchers explained that on Pluto, the solid nitrogen is quite supple and can flow viscously. When the flowing frozen nitrogen slowly warms up, parts of it rise up to the surface like splotches in a lava lamp. These bubbles cool down and sink to the bottom again. This leaves room for new bubbles to rise and take their place. They believe that these cells sometimes merge together in sets before they sink down, which could help make some of the more complex line work seen on the Planum. They also believe that the resulting bubbles restructure every 500,000 to 1 million years or so.
McKinnon said that the cool thing is that you can use an understanding of the process to cross-examine what's going on inside Pluto. You can say that the surface of Sputnik Planum looks like it's covered in these convective wells. But then what?
He added that Pluto is much more active than anyone hope for. Pluto stands to reason that the other bodies are at least analogous because they are running on their own power, according to National Geographic.
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NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone
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First Posted: Jun 03, 2016 04:10 AM EDT
Scientists have discovered that Pluto's heart informally known as Sputnik Planum appears to be continuously youthful. It was emptied of impact craters and was seen speckled with mysterious polygonal shapes between six and 24 miles in diameter.
The planet's heart has no impact craters, which means that there is some kind of geological process that coated Pluto's Sputnik Planum fairly recently. The broken frozen heart of Pluto might still be beating because it replenishes itself with new ice always. This makes the planet having one of the youngest surfaces in the solar system, according to a pair of papers that were printed in Nature.
William B. McKinnon of Washington University said that for the first time, they can determine what these strange welts on the icy surface of Pluto really are, according to Washington Post. The researchers said that the mysterious polygons of Pluto's heart are the rising bubbles that are created by some type of heating system below. In the entire Sputnik Planum, there is a layer of mostly nitrogen ice that is being heated so slowly by the slight convection of slowly decaying radioactive elements inside the dwarf planet.
The researchers explained that on Pluto, the solid nitrogen is quite supple and can flow viscously. When the flowing frozen nitrogen slowly warms up, parts of it rise up to the surface like splotches in a lava lamp. These bubbles cool down and sink to the bottom again. This leaves room for new bubbles to rise and take their place. They believe that these cells sometimes merge together in sets before they sink down, which could help make some of the more complex line work seen on the Planum. They also believe that the resulting bubbles restructure every 500,000 to 1 million years or so.
McKinnon said that the cool thing is that you can use an understanding of the process to cross-examine what's going on inside Pluto. You can say that the surface of Sputnik Planum looks like it's covered in these convective wells. But then what?
He added that Pluto is much more active than anyone hope for. Pluto stands to reason that the other bodies are at least analogous because they are running on their own power, according to National Geographic.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone