NASA Mission Suggests Pluto Has Ocean, Know Why

NASA's New Horizons mission found proof last year that an enormous subsurface ocean may have, and could still, exist underneath Pluto's surface. Now, scientists from the Planetary Science Institute and Brown University have reportedly suggested that a liquid ocean may actually still be present on the dwarf planet.

The researching team of scientists based their analysis on data collected by the New Horizons mission during its flyby of Pluto in 2015, and created a thermal computer model of the icy ex planet's evolution. According to the experts if the planet's subsurface ocean had frozen, then the whole of Pluto would have contracted. However, the presence of deep faults and massive mountains on the icy world suggests that Pluto is in fact been expanding, a fact that backs the phenomenon of an unfrozen subsurface ocean.

"What New Horizons showed was that there are extensional tectonic features, which indicate that Pluto went through a period of global expansion," said Noah Hammond, researcher from Brown University. "A subsurface ocean that was slowly freezing over would cause this kind of expansion. So we conclude that ice II has not formed, and therefore that the ocean hasn't completely frozen".

Furthermore, if Pluto had frozen completely then a different kind of ice would have formed on it due to the dwarf planet's high pressure and low temperatures. Called Ice II, that type of ice would have a dense crystalline form and could have only been created if Pluto's outer shell was a minimum of 260 meters in thickness. However, Pluto's outer shell is in fact 300 meters thick, which means that it doesn't seem to have shrunk, therefore indicating the possibility of ice II not having formed. In addition, the methane and nitrogen ices on the surface of Pluto could also be maintaining a warmer temperature for its underwater ocean. The scientists have also pointed out that the presence of water on Pluto's surface implies that other watery planets could also exist far away from their stars.