NASA finds icebergs on Pluto

Scientists from NASA, processing data on Pluto from the New Horizons automated station, found strange “hills” on the surface of a dwarf planet, slowly moving with time. Scientists believe that this - iceberg iceberg floating in the seas of liquid nitrogen. The sizes of icebergs vary from one to several kilometers across.

The seas of liquid nitrogen on Pluto are surrounded by glaciers of the same substance, but apart from this, there is water ice on the surface of the planet. Apparently, the water glaciers slid from the headwaters of the planet to the seas, and crushed, and then sailed - because water ice is lighter than liquid nitrogen.


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Under the action of convection currents, icebergs traveling on the surface of the seas are knocked down into groups whose size is about 20 km in diameter. And on the northern edge of the photograph, a rather large group of icebergs (35 x 60 km) is visible, lumped near the hills of Challenger (named after the space shuttle Challenger, which crashed in 1986 and caused the death of astronauts).

All this magnificence occurs on the so-called. Satellite Sputnik [Sputnik Planum] - an icy plain on the surface of Pluto, revealed on the first detailed photos of Pluto on July 15, 2015. It is (yet informally) named after the first artificial satellite of the Earth.

Pluto’s recent flight by the New Horizons automated station has provided scientists with many surprising discoveries about this dwarf planet. This is the origin of the " heart ", and the presence of cryovolcanoes and water ice on the planet - in total, over 100 discoveries have been made at NASA in three months.