LONDON: The chief investigator of NASA’s Pluto Exploration Programme has said that the biggest finding till date on the planet is that Pluto is geologically active after over four billion years. A stunning new revelation has hinted that Pluto could actually be a planet which is alive.
The first colour images of Pluto’s atmosphere returned by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft last week has revealed a blue haze. In a second significant finding that now has scientists excited, New Horizons has detected numerous small, exposed regions of water ice on Pluto.
However, these patterns of water ice are haphazard and not evenly distributed. Understanding why water appears exactly where it does, and not in other places, is a challenge that we are digging into, said NASA.
“Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt? It’s gorgeous,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute.
Scientists say a blue sky often results from scattering of sunlight by very small particles. On Earth, those particles are very tiny nitrogen molecules. On Pluto they appear to be larger — but still relatively small — soot-like particles NASA calls tholins.
“That striking blue tint tells us about the size and composition of the haze particles. Finding the H2O – ice is very important and confirms our notions about water-ice being the dominant constructional material for Pluto’s mountains and other geology. The blue haze tells us that the particles in the haze are very small,” Stern said.
Upon being asked whether this meant Pluto once had life, Stern said, “Doubtful.”
“It’s minus 400 degree Fahrenheit and so too cold for life as we know it. We now know that Pluto is much more interesting and puzzling, than expected,” he further added.
NASA says Pluto has been a harbinger of the mysteries that await on the planetary frontier. “In 1930, it offered a preview of the icy, rocky objects in what would become known as the Kuiper Belt; half a century later, with the discovery of Charon, it became the first of what we now know are thousands of binary objects in the region. Pluto is presently the only known Kuiper Belt Object with multiple moons – but as history indicates, it’s likely just the first glimpse of other incredible scientific finds,” the organisation adds.
