Pluto has rivers of ice and terrestrial glaciers – Herald Tribune

  Marcia Dunn. AP

 

 Pluto is more hazy than scientists thought and appears to be covered with rivers of ice.

 

 The team responsible for the New Horizons spacecraft that flew past the dwarf planet last week unveiled new images on Friday that previously unexplored star on the edge of the solar system.

 

 “If you are seeing a cardiologist might want to leave the room,” joked Alan Stern, chief scientist, when initiating a conference at NASA headquarters. “There are some pretty amazing discoveries.”

 The New Horizons NASA, currently located at 12 million kilometers (7.5 million miles) beyond Pluto, detected layers of haze in the atmosphere having a thickness of about 160 kilometers (100 miles) much thicker than expected. It is believed that all this haze causes the reddish color of the star.

 

 If one were standing on Pluto and look up, probably not notice the haze, said Michael Summers, George Mason University. In fact, the New Horizons had to wait until after its closest approach on July 14, so that the sun would allow capturing the silhouette and the atmosphere of Pluto could be measured based on the scattered sunlight.

 

 As for its amazing ice rivers, they appear to be relatively recent: emerged ago just a few tens of million years, according to William McKinnon of Washington University in Saint Louis. In comparison, Pluto and the rest of the solar system have 4,500 million years.

 

 Seeing as evidence of recent activity, he said, is “simply a dream come true.”

 

 Pluto’s temperature is -229 degrees Celsius (-380 Fahrenheit), so water ice could not move alone. But McKinnon said nitrogen and other ices on Pluto is presumed there would be geologically soft and therefore able to flow like glaciers on Earth.

 

 Some of that Plutonian ice seems to have emptied craters created by the impact of celestial bodies, which formed ponds frozen nitrogen. One of these craters is approximately half full size of the metropolitan area of ​​Washington, DC, said the scientist.

 

 These latest findings will support the theory that underneath the ice crust of Pluto could have an ocean, he said.

 

 The key

 The ship traveled 4,820 million km. For 9 and a half years to get the first close-up view of the star. The New Horizons team emphasized that most of the collected data is still on board the ship and it will take more than a year to get them.