Pluto’s surface, suitable for a world whose surface vibrates at a temperature of -364 F (-220 C), is frozen.
But beneath that nitrogen ice may lie an underground ocean of liquid water. A recent study suggested what that ocean might look like: It could be deeper than Earth’s crust and denser than seawater.
It may seem strange to search for liquid water in such a cold and distant world Pluto. But in the data from New Horizons, scientists have found some evidence that points to a layer of liquid water beneath Pluto’s surface. For one, Pluto is lacking a puff at its equator, a feature that is less likely to form if a body has a liquid interior. Second, Pluto’s icy surface appears to have been fractured due to stretching timewhich may have been caused by the freezing of liquid water beneath the nitrogen ice on its surface, since water is one of the few substances that expands when it freezes.
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More surprising is that some scientists believe that Pluto holds cryovolcanoes that emit water vapor or even solid water ice. That water has to come from somewhere—and a layer of liquid water beneath Pluto’s crust would fit the description.
Researchers at Washington University in St. In particular, they wanted to match Sputnik Planitia – a heart-shaped basin on Pluto’s surface that is thought to be the result of an impact. So the researchers tried different configurations of ocean thickness and water density that would result in the rift-crisscrossed Sputnik Planitia observed by New Horizons.
“We have evaluated a type The gold zone where the density and thickness of the shell are right”, he said Alex Nguyena graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis and one of the authors, at a statement.
Their calculations showed that a Plutonian ocean would most likely be about 25 to 50 miles (40 to 80 kilometers) thick and about 8 percent denser than earth sea water. That’s almost as dense as the Great Salt Lake.
But the idea of a Plutonian ocean is still controversial. Scientists don’t know enough about Pluto to know if the evidence proves liquid water or if it’s just circumstantial. Recently, a study Simulating the origin of Sputnik Planitia suggested that the heart-shaped basin was more likely to have formed if Pluto had a solid interior.
So until a New Horizons successor allows us to revisit Pluto, what lies beneath the world’s surface will remain shrouded in shadow.
Nguyen and co-author Patrick McGovern published their work in the journal Icarus on February 15.
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