Quote:Scientists expected Pluto’s surface to look like other icy planets, a surface of ice with a few craters here and there. Instead, they found ginormous mountains as tall as the Rockies.

Quote:NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has given the world a new image of Pluto that suggests that there could be life on the dwarf planet if not on Mars as well. The picture has an X mark that is shaking all of the astronomy community.
New Horizons LORRI gives us surprising footage of Sputnik Planum. The area, which is at a lower elevation than the surrounding region by a few miles, isn’t totally flat. The surface is separated into cells 10 to 25 miles wide. When seen with low sun angles, the cells have slightly raised centers and margins with ridges. There are about 100 yards in height variation throughout the area.
Certain scientists believe that this pattern of cells comes from the thermal convection of the ices in Sputnik Planum. These ices are nitrogen-dominated and can be up to several miles deep in certain spots. The nitrogen is warm in Pluto’s core, and it eventually rises up in blobs and the process is repeated. Essentially, it behaves like a lava lamp.

Some models by the team supervising New Horizons say that these blobs of nitrogen can evolve and merge throughout millions of years. One of these margins was marked with an X by the team. It is a former four-way junction where four cells me. There are other three-way active junctions that can be seen in the LORRI mosaic.

Quote:Mr Cox is the latest scientist to speak of his hopes that the dwarf planet is still geologically active and has sea beneath its icy and rocky crust.

His comments come after Express.co.uk discovered a geological feature in close-up images of Pluto sent back by Nasa's new Horizons unmanned space probe, which the US space agency said could show it was still experiencing tectonic movements.

The probe sent back images which also showed huge mountains made of ice.

Mr Cox said a sea beneath the surface could be warm enough to spark the processes needed to form the simplest forms of life - the type of microrganisma that can thrive in the frozen envronment of the Arctic.
He said: "The probe showed you that there may well be a subsurface ocean on Pluto.

"This means if our understanding of life on Earth is even slightly correct - that you could have living things there."

New Horizons flew past Pluto to within 7,800 miles of the surface.

The most close up pictures are still yet to be seen as due to the massive distances involved only about five percent of the images have made it back so far.

The whole process will take around a year.

Express.co.uk identified a crater-like feature in July, which we showed to Nasa, and one of its scientists said it could mean the planet was still active.

It is now widely believed that it still is.

Quote:He said: "The probe showed you that there may well be a subsurface ocean on Pluto.

"This means if our understanding of life on Earth is even slightly correct - that you could have living things there."

New Horizons flew past Pluto to within 7,800 miles of the surface.

The most close up pictures are still yet to be seen as due to the massive distances involved only about five percent of the images have made it back so far.

The whole process will take around a year.

Express.co.uk identified a crater-like feature in July, which we showed to Nasa, and one of its scientists said it could mean the planet was still active.

It is now widely believed that it still is.

      

Quote:"We see water ice on Pluto for the first time.

"We can be very sure that the water is there in great abundance."

But he adds that even if there is water, that alone would not be enough for life to start, and it could be just surface water on Pluto.

Quote:Scientists are puzzled by mysterious "haloes" on Pluto

Quote:The discovery of strange halo-like craters on Pluto has raised a new mystery about how the odd scars formed on the icy world.

Pluto's "halo" craters are clearly visible in a new image from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which made the first-ever flyby of the dwarf planet in July 2015. In the image, a black-and-white view reveals dozens of ringed craters (NASA describes these formations as "haloed") strewn across the dark landscape of Vega Terra, a region in the far western reaches of the hemisphere photographed by New Horizons during its flyby. The craters have bright walls and rims, making them stand out from their darker surroundings.
While the haloed craters are eye-catching, what has really stumped scientists is what these features are made of.

Quote:A glimpse at the craters provided by New Horizons' Ralph/Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array revealed a surprising connection between the bright halo features and the distribution of methane ice, NASA officials explained in an image description. This methane ice around the craters shows up as a deep purple in an inset view included in the new image. The crater floors and in-between regions, meanwhile, are colored blue to indicate water ice.

"Exactly why the bright methane ice settles on these crater rims and walls is a mystery; also puzzling is why this same effect doesn't occur broadly across Pluto," NASA officials wrote in the image description.