But beneath that nitrogen ice may lie a subsurface ocean of liquid water. A recent study suggested what that ocean might look like: It might be deeper than Earth's crust and denser than Earth's seawater.at its equator, a feature that is less likely to form if a body has a liquid interior.
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston set about constructing a model of what that liquid layer might look like. In particular, they wanted to match Sputnik Planitia — a heart-shaped lowland basin on Pluto's surface thought to be the aftermath of an impact.
Their calculations indicated that a Plutonian ocean would most likely be around 25 to 50 miles thick, and about 8 percent denser thanBut the idea of a Plutonian ocean is still controversial. Scientists don't know enough about Pluto to know if the evidence really points to liquid water or if it's just circumstantial. Most recently,simulating the origin of Sputnik Planitia suggested that the heart-shaped basin was most likely to have formed if Pluto had a solid interior.
So, until a successor to New Horizons lets us revisit Pluto, what lies beneath the world's surface will remain cloaked in shadow.to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: Rahul Rao is a graduate of New York University's SHERP and a freelance science writer, regularly covering physics, space, and infrastructure. His work has appeared in Gizmodo, Popular Science, Inverse, IEEE Spectrum, and Continuum. He enjoys riding trains for fun, and he has seen every surviving episode of Doctor Who.
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