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.
...
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)
Related Stories
Evidence supports 'hot start' scenario and early ocean formation on Pluto (SD)
The accretion of new material during Pluto's formation may have generated enough heat to create a liquid ocean that has persisted beneath an icy crust to the present day, despite the dwarf planet's orbit far from the sun in the cold outer reaches of the solar system.
This "hot start" scenario, presented in a paper published June 22 in Nature Geoscience [DOI: 10.1038/s41561-020-0595-0] [DX], contrasts with the traditional view of Pluto's origins as a ball of frozen ice and rock in which radioactive decay could have eventually generated enough heat to melt the ice and form a subsurface ocean.
[...] The researchers calculated that if Pluto formed over a period of less that 30,000 years, then it would have started out hot. If, instead, accretion took place over a few million years, a hot start would only be possible if large impactors buried their energy deep beneath the surface.
The new findings imply that other large Kuiper belt objects probably also started out hot and could have had early oceans. These oceans could persist to the present day in the largest objects, such as the dwarf planets Eris and Makemake.
Previously:
Pluto's 'Heart' Sheds Light On Possible Buried Ocean
Subsurface Ocean Could Explain Pluto's "Heart" Feature Aligning with Charon
Pluto Has an Underground Ocean Kept Warm by a Layer of Gassy Ice
(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...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday May 21 2019, @09:00PM (1 child)
When ever I hear about stuff like this I always remember the line from Hamlet;
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. "
Now I have to wonder if there could be life there. One would think not but history has shown that life manages to find a way.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday May 21 2019, @09:08PM
I've been posting this link for a couple of years now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_lakes_and_seas_in_the_Solar_System [wikipedia.org]
Let that sink in.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @12:48AM
And other large mammals, including some large upright ones.