What's underneath?
(https://astronomy.com/news/2020/06/pluto-has-likely-maintained-an-underground-liquid-ocean-for-billions-of-years)
>When early Earth was still a molten mass with a surface swimming in liquid magma, Pluto and its underground ocean were just forming. And for the billions of years since, liquid plutonian water has remained in the distant solar system, providing a potential abode for life. At least, that’s the conclusion of a new study published June 22 in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The study rewrites scientists’ theories about the early history of Pluto and suggests that other liquid oceans — once thought to be unique to Earth — are common on dwarf planets across the outer solar system.
>“Oceans are ubiquitous. Most of them are in the outer solar system. And they could be abodes for life,” says S. Alan Stern, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute and head of NASA’s New Horizons mission. “This is a fundamental sea change in the way we view the solar system.”
When the New Horizons spacecraft made its flyby of Pluto in 2015 (https://astronomy.com/news/2016/10/new-horizons-sends-last-of-data), it revealed a surface geology so active and complex that scientists suspected there may have once been an ocean buried miles beneath Pluto’s crust of ice. Those suspicions have grown closer to presumptions in recent years. And now, most planetary scientists agree that, even today, Pluto has a global liquid ocean under its surface.
Until now, astronomers assumed that Pluto formed out of cold material glomming together very slowly. As a dusty disk of debris coalesced around our Sun, the dwarf planet would have gradually clumped together out of bits of rock and ice. Once large enough, Pluto’s internal heat would have melted some of its ice, creating a subsurface ocean. That story works well, astronomers say, as Pluto’s underground ocean is explained simply by the decay of radioactive elements.
(https://astronomy.com/news/2020/06/pluto-has-likely-maintained-an-underground-liquid-ocean-for-billions-of-years)
>When early Earth was still a molten mass with a surface swimming in liquid magma, Pluto and its underground ocean were just forming. And for the billions of years since, liquid plutonian water has remained in the distant solar system, providing a potential abode for life. At least, that’s the conclusion of a new study published June 22 in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The study rewrites scientists’ theories about the early history of Pluto and suggests that other liquid oceans — once thought to be unique to Earth — are common on dwarf planets across the outer solar system.
>“Oceans are ubiquitous. Most of them are in the outer solar system. And they could be abodes for life,” says S. Alan Stern, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute and head of NASA’s New Horizons mission. “This is a fundamental sea change in the way we view the solar system.”
When the New Horizons spacecraft made its flyby of Pluto in 2015 (https://astronomy.com/news/2016/10/new-horizons-sends-last-of-data), it revealed a surface geology so active and complex that scientists suspected there may have once been an ocean buried miles beneath Pluto’s crust of ice. Those suspicions have grown closer to presumptions in recent years. And now, most planetary scientists agree that, even today, Pluto has a global liquid ocean under its surface.
Until now, astronomers assumed that Pluto formed out of cold material glomming together very slowly. As a dusty disk of debris coalesced around our Sun, the dwarf planet would have gradually clumped together out of bits of rock and ice. Once large enough, Pluto’s internal heat would have melted some of its ice, creating a subsurface ocean. That story works well, astronomers say, as Pluto’s underground ocean is explained simply by the decay of radioactive elements.
