MEXICO: New pictures from the NASA spacecraft New Horizons on its successful flypast of Pluto have revealed a major surprise – a range of mountains rising as high as 3,353m above the surface of the icy planet.
The mountains are from no more than 100 million years ago – mere youngsters relative to the 4.56-billion-year age of the solar system – and may still be in the process of building, said Jeff Moore, of New Horizons’ Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team (GGI).
That suggests the region they are in, which covers less than 1pc of Pluto’s surface, may still be geologically active today.
Nasa experts base the youthful age estimate on the lack of craters there. As with the rest of Pluto, this region is thought to have been hit by space debris for billions of years and would have once been heavily cratered – unless recent activity had given the region a facelift, erasing those pockmarks.
Mr Moore said: “This is one of the youngest surfaces we’ve ever seen in the solar system.”
Unlike the icy moons of giant planets, Pluto cannot be heated by gravitational interactions with a much larger planetary body. Some other process must be generating the mountainous landscape.
“This may cause us to rethink what powers geological activity on many other icy worlds,” said GGI deputy team leader John Spencer. The mountains are thought to be composed of the planet’s water-ice “bedrock”.
Images from New Horizons also give remarkable new details of Pluto’s largest moon, Charon. There is a canyon estimated to be 6km-9km deep, plus a range of cliffs and troughs stretching about 950km from left to right.
Again, there is a lack of craters, suggesting a relatively young surface that has been reshaped by geologic activity.
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