Is That a Frozen Lake on Pluto?

Source: National Geographic

A Blog by Nadia Drake

Is That a Frozen Lake on Pluto?

POSTED MON, 03/21/2016

THE WOODLANDS, Texas –

Liquids may have pooled and flowed on Pluto’s surface within the last million years – and they may do so again, scientists reported March 21 at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

Though not a given, the presence of liquids on Pluto at any point is puzzling, given that average temperatures on the frozen world hover around -400 Fahrenheit. But, as NASA’s New Horizons team is learning, Pluto is anything but dead – or predictable.

“What the data revealed did not surprise us,” says NASA’s Jim Green. “It shocked us.”

Two lines of evidence suggest the dwarf world’s surface may occasionally be just a little bit wetter than it is now. One is based on how the planet’s atmospheric pressure changes during Pluto’s 248-year orbit, and the other comes from recent images sent home by the New Horizons spacecraft, which flew by Pluto in July 2015.

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Read more: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/21/is-that-a-frozen-lake-on-pluto/