Pluto ’s heart and soul is one of the most challenging and puzzling features on the dwarf planet . Its politic Earth’s surface indicates that it is constantly changing , and research worker have toy with the approximation that there ’s a liquid ocean under it .
So a US research squad , lead by Brandon Johnson from Brown University , constructed a new model for Pluto . They simulated the scenario that could create the massive shock volcanic crater that is Pluto ’s heart , formally known as Sputnik Planum .
And they found that the presence of an ocean beneath the Plutonian surface was highly likely , suggesting it may be 100 kilometers ( 62 air mile ) thick . And the study also indicates it may be as salty as the Dead Sea .
“ Thermal models of Pluto ’s home and tectonic evidence found on the airfoil hint that an sea may survive , but it ’s not easy to infer its size or anything else about it , ” said Johnson in astatement . “ We ’ve been able to put some constraints on its thickness and get some clues about paper . ”
The inquiry , write inGeophysical Review Letters , focalise on Sputnik Planum . The region is a former meteor volcanic crater , formed when a object 200 klick ( 125 mile ) wide hit Pluto .
A all-important clue about this workplace make out not from Pluto but from its Sun Myung Moon Charon . Charon and Pluto are tidally locked , meaning they always show the same face to each other . Sputnik Planum posture directly under Charon , an indication that there ’s a gravitative anomaly in the region .
The researcher think that the wallop that formed the heart was espouse by a backlash that overstretch denser material from deeply within the dwarf planet interior . Water is denser than ice , so it might have filled the crater watershed , which was later cover innitrogen trash . This makes the region more monumental than the rest of the Tartarean surface , and thus explain the gravitational anomaly .
“ This scenario command a liquid ocean . We wanted to run computer models of the shock to see if this is something that would really happen , ” Johnson added .
The model used a variety of parameter from no water at all to an ocean 200 kilometre ( 124 mile ) abstruse . They also change the salt of the possible ocean . A 100 - kilometer thick , 30 - percent - salinity sea was the scenario that well reconstructed what we see in Sputnik Planum .
“ It ’s pretty amazing to me that you have this consistency so far out in the Solar System that still may have liquid water , ” Johnson concluded .
researcher hope that more psychoanalysis of the New Horizons data will provide more info about the interior working of Pluto .
