Pluto may be home to a vast alien ocean hiding beneath its frozen surface, according to new data recorded by the New Horizons spacecraft. This is the latest unexpected discovery uncovered concerning the distant dwarf planet.
Billions of years ago, Pluto likely had a much thicker atmosphere, and experienced warmer temperatures, than present on the frigid body today. This may have allowed an ocean to exist on the surface, along with lakes and free-flowing rivers. Data from the flyby showed evidence of an ancient lake, now extinct, on the surface of the body.
"In addition to this possible former lake, we also see evidence of channels that may also have carried liquids in Pluto's past," said Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute.
Before the arrival of New Horizons at Pluto, many astronomers believed the dwarf planet was likely a cold, dead, barren world. The spacecraft observed a dramatic geological landscape, including complex interactions between massive deposits of water ice, methane, and frozen carbon monoxide.
"These cycles are a lot richer than those on Earth, where there's really only one material that condenses and evaporates - water. On Pluto, there are at least three materials, and while they interact in ways we don't yet fully understand, we definitely see their effects all across Pluto's surface," said Will Grundy of the Lowell Observatory.
New Horizons is currently so far from Earth that transmitting data to or from the spacecraft that radio signals racing through space at over 186,000 miles a second, take nearly five hours to travel between the interplanetary observatory and mission engineers on our home planet.
Pluto was found to contain a rocky core, covered in a mantle of water ice. This, in turn, is surrounded by frozen methane, carbon monoxide and nitrogen. When heated by the distant sun, the materials are converted directly into vapors, which then fall back to the dwarf planet in the form of precipitation.
New Horizons became the first spacecraft to ever fly by Pluto in July 2015, revealing the icy dwarf planet in a way never before seen by humans. Eight months later, mission engineers are still sorting through the vast amount of data revealed by the spacecraft, as data continues to return to Earth from the distant spacecraft.
