Tokyo: An insulating layer of gas beneath Pluto’s icy exterior may be protecting a subsurface ocean from freezing, scientists claim. The team from the Hokkaido University in Japan conducted computer simulations covering a timescale of 4.6 billion years, when the solar system began to form. In July 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew through Pluto’s system, providing the first-ever close-up images of this distant dwarf planet and its moons.
The images showed Pluto’s unexpected topography, including a white-coloured ellipsoidal basin named Sputnik Planitia, located near the equator. Due to its location and topography, scientists believe a subsurface ocean exists beneath the ice shell which is thinned at Sputnik Planitia.
Researchers at Tokushima University in Japan and the University of California, Santa Cruz in the US, considered what could keep the subsurface ocean warm while keeping the ice shell’s inner surface frozen and uneven on Pluto.
The team hypothesised that an “insulating layer” of gas hydrates exists beneath the icy surface of Sputnik Planitia. Gas hydrates are crystalline ice-like solids formed of gas trapped within molecular water cages. They are highly viscous, have low thermal conductivity, and could therefore provide
insulating properties.
