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Pluto may have a massive subsurface ocean under its heart-shaped region, Sputnik Planitia, aligned with Pluto's tidally-locked satellite Charon:
Pluto may harbour a slushy water ocean beneath its most prominent surface feature, known as the "heart". This could explain why part of the heart-shaped region - called Sputnik Planitia - is locked in alignment with Pluto's largest moon Charon. A viscous ocean beneath the icy crust could have acted as a heavy, irregular mass that rolled Pluto over, so that Sputnik Planitia was facing the moon.
[...] Sputnik Planitia is a circular region in the heart's left "ventricle" and is aligned almost exactly opposite Charon. In addition, Pluto and Charon are tidally locked, which results in Pluto and Charon always showing the same face to each other.
"If you were to draw a line from the centre of Pluto's moon Charon through Pluto, it would come out on the other side, almost right through Sputnik Planitia. That line is what we call the tidal axis" said James Keane, from the University of Arizona, co-author of one of a pair of papers published on the subject in Nature journal. This is strongly suggestive of a particular evolutionary course for Pluto. The researchers contend that Sputnik Planitia formed somewhere else on Pluto and then dragged the entire dwarf planet over - by as much as 60 degrees - relative to its spin axis.
Also at UCSC.
Reorientation of Sputnik Planitia implies a subsurface ocean on Pluto (DOI: 10.1038/nature20148) (DX)
Previously: New Horizons Finishes Sending 2015 Flyby Data
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @05:55AM
I said the same to Magellan, Columbus, Cook. The idiots ignored me. Morons! Cook even got eaten.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @06:10AM
The differences being, dear smug asshole, the vast distance involved and the inhospitable environment. By the time of Columbus, intercontinental migrations had occurred multiple times, without ships, by people on foot. Whereas no one has ever, at any time in history, ever ventured beyond the moon.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Friday November 18 2016, @07:52AM
So, are you arguing that because no-one has yet travelled beyond the moon that no-one ever will? Are you ignoring whatever discoveries and inventions might happen in the future that make travelling such huge distances possible. I bet they scoffed when someone once said 'I am going to build a flying machine that will carry me as high as birds might fly'. They scoffed, but they were wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @08:11PM
Yes, that's the assertion. No one will travel to Pluto.
Your example of flying birds is terrible, because humans have been capable of flying forever. Climb a tree and jump, or jump off a cliff, and you're flying. Now you might well die when you land, but the fact is you flew.
No one has ever traveled beyond the moon, because there's nothing valuable out there that can't be obtained on earth. And there certainly aren't any humans out there to go to war with. The entire purpose of the moonshot was to produce the necessary technology to make intercontinental warfare practical, and that goal has been achieved already. There's no additional benefit to traveling farther out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @07:52PM
Cook even got eaten.
Could have seen that one coming!