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Strange Shapes On Pluto’s Surface Gives It A “Face-Lift”

Photo from Pixabay

Strange, polygon-shaped formations seen on Pluto’s surface are likely to have been formed because of activity on a half-mile thick frozen nitrogen sheet, confirming the theory that Pluto is not cold and dead but active.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft captured these miles-wide geometric shapes during its historic flyby on July 14, 2015. Two studies that have analyzed the images New Horizon sent back say that these findings could tell scientists how other icy dwarf planets beyond the solar system might behave, reports Space.com.

The most prominent geological feature in the images is a vast, oval-shaped depression nicknamed Sputnik Planum. This basin stretches across Pluto’ equator and is about 347,500 square miles (900,000 square kilometers) large and at least 1.2 to 1.8 miles (2 to 3 kilometers) deep.

Its shape and surrounding mountains appear to suggest that it is a crater from a giant cosmic impact “maybe 4 billion or more years ago,” says William McKinnon, lead author on one of the studies and a planetary geophysicist at Washington University in St. Louis.

Sputnik Planum is filled with ice that consists primarily of nitrogen. This frozen nitrogen is broken into irregular 6 to 25 mile-wide pieces (10 to 40 kilometers), with centers rising to about 165 feet (50 meters).

The scientists further studied data sent back by the New Horizons spacecraft to determine where these shapes came from. Computer models based on the data showed that convection, or churning movements that comes from the rising and sinking of warmer and cooler matter, could provide insight into the giant sizes of these “cells.”

To be more specific, the research team’s models suggest that the convection is coming from nitrogen ice layers more than half a mile (1 kilometer) wide. “The convection you’re seeing here is unlike anything seen before in the solar system, because the material that’s convecting isn’t rigid and strong – everything here is softer,” McKinnon told Space.com. “Nitrogen ice is not soft like a gummy bear is soft, but still more pliable than water ice on earth, so it’s convecting vigorously and forming these polygonal cells.”

The researchers calculated that this convection likely means that the surface of Sputnik Planum renews itself every half-million years, making it one of the youngest surfaces in the solar system.

The studies are published in the journal Nature: the first here and the second here.

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