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We think that Pluto is hiding a liquid ocean, but why it hasn't frozen is a big mystery. Now it seems that gas trapped inside the bottom layer of its icy outer shell may be keeping it warm.
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The layer would be made out of a material called a gas hydrate, which occurs when gas molecules get trapped between frozen water molecules. "It's not bubbles, it's a little microscopic cage for keeping gas atoms in," says Nimmo. "It doesn't look very different from regular ice, but it's got all that gas in there."Gas hydrates are much better insulators than water ice, so the researchers calculated that this extra layer could keep the ocean around and maintain the ice shell as we see it now. This may help explain why Pluto's tenuous atmosphere has lots of nitrogen but almost no methane – it's much easier for methane to get caught in a gas hydrate and kept underground.
Perhaps we should send our climate-harming cows to Pluto...
Also at ScienceAlert and Space.com.
Pluto's ocean is capped and insulated by gas hydrates (DOI: 10.1038/s41561-019-0369-8) (DX)
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday May 21 2019, @06:45PM (3 children)
> We think that Pluto is hiding a liquid ocean
Okay. So, for this game of interstellar hide-and-seek, your team gets Pluto. Seriously, he plays like a cross of a four year-old, and a desperate cringy teen boy.
One probe flies by, thousands of miles away, and he's there "look at me! I'm right here! Wanna see my heart? I've got secret liquid inside!"
(Score: 2) by Snow on Tuesday May 21 2019, @08:24PM (2 children)
We all saw those pictures... they were beautiful and unlike anything we were expecting.
I'd gladly take Pluto on my team. You can take Neptune.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Tuesday May 21 2019, @08:25PM (1 child)
Has anybody taken Uranus?
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @01:17AM
I sent a probe there...