We all know pluto to be the estranged non-planet, but it may have been born as a warmer place sheltering a subsurface ocean that still exists today, which makes Pluto and Earth more alike than we previously thought. Although shielded from the Sun’s radiation thanks to the sheer distance from its star, there could be another way this frozen world could be warm enough to contain liquid water. Whether Pluto has stayed warm enough to allow this ocean to remain liquid is another question.
When Pluto was forming, new material would have been coming in and impacting its surface. Each impact is like an explosion that would warm the nearby area. If Pluto formed slowly, the surface would cool between each impact and generally stay very cold. If Pluto formed quickly, there would be an impact on top of an impact and the surface won’t have time to cool. Scientists in the University of California calculate that if Pluto formed in less than 30,000 years, the heat from these impacts could have been sufficient to lead to an early ocean. if Pluto was built up fast enough the heat would’ve been trapped inside.
Pluto, orbiting the sun about 40 times further than Earth in a region called the Kuiper Belt, may possess an icy outer shell hundreds of kilometres thick atop an ocean of water perhaps mixed with salts and ammonia, with a solid rocky core below. Under this scenario, parts of the ocean would gradually freeze over time. Water expands as it freezes, and cracks on Pluto's surfacing may be evidence of this as the planet’s surface temperature is estimated to be about -230 C.
Because water is considered a vital ingredient for life, a subsurface ocean could make Pluto a long-shot candidate for harbouring living organisms. Water could have even been interacting chemically with the rocky core beneath the ocean, giving the planet more chemical ingredients to operate with.
Writer: Ariya Gupta
28/06/2020
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