Secret Ocean Found On Pluto

Scientists have collected more and more evidence in recent years that a liquid ocean of water probably exists under the icy surface of Pluto—a wild prospect for a dwarf planet that orbits the sun nearly 40 times farther away than Earth does, with temperatures dropping below -380 degrees Fahrenheit.

Those circumstances raise a fierce question: how could a subsurface ocean on Pluto, should it really exist, possibly stay unfrozen?

Just like a thermos is designed to insulate warm coffee from the cold elements of the outside world, so too does Pluto retain its own insulation tricks to keep its global ocean nice and toasty (relatively speaking).

In a study published in Nature Geoscience on Monday, a team of planetary scientists demonstrate that a layer of gas likely exists just beneath the icy shell of the dwarf planet’s surface, capable of conferring a warming insulation to the ocean and keeping temperatures high enough so things stay liquid. The findings help reconcile a number of contradictory mysteries, giving scientists possibly their best explanation yet for what’s brewing beneath the surface of one of the solar system’s most exotic celestial bodies.

We don’t have direct observations of the supposed subsurface ocean, but there are two main lines of evidence that support its existence. First, theoretical calculations show the radioactive decay of rocks inside Pluto would produce enough heat to sustain an underground ocean. Second, there are geological features consistent with subsurface oceans, like fractures created from ocean refreezes.

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Overall, proving there is a coating of clathrates sitting right underneath a 100-mile ice sheet located billions of miles away is far from straightforward.

But at least now scientists have a bit more direction in what they might want to focus on.
Pluto’s hiding something in its insides, and a new era of deep space science is bound to find out what it is sooner or later.