Pluto: ice mountains 3,500 meters high, the absence of craters – BBC

Milan , July 15, 2015 – 23:27

     
     
 

” We are really surprised. We did not expect to find ice mountains 3,500 meters high. ” NASA scientists are amazed by the first images sent by the probe New Horizons to Pluto on July 14 flew over from close range. It’s not just the mountains of equatorial region that rise thousands of meters above the surface. What is amazing is also the absence of impact craters suggests that in a first analysis that the geological phenomena that have drawn the surface of the dwarf planet are relatively young: the mountains of ice have no more than 100 million years, very little if It thinks that the planet as a whole was formed 4.5 billion years ago.

shadow carousel

 
 

Pluto: the discovery in 1930 of the New Horizons flyby and close-ups

 

“Something unexpected: no craters”

“I never expected to find not even an impact crater,” said John Spencer, the team of scientists from New Horizons in the press conference of presentation of the first images that come to almost 5 billion kilometers away. Researchers think that the inside of Pluto possesses a body of rock made of silicates containing a percentage of radioactive elements whose decay provides the energy to the geology of Pluto.

Photos belie old certainties

But until now it was believed that such small bodies could not hold a quantity of radioactive elements sufficient to provide the necessary energy. A theory that is contradicted by the photos that come from the periphery of the Solar System.

shadow carousel

 
 

The heart of Pluto triggers the imagination of social

 

The images of Charon

Even the largest satellite Pluto, Charon, with whom in real form a binary system, reserve some surprises, although Charon is more like the same size bodies that orbit around Jupiter and Saturn, although does not have the heat created by the tidal forces of these giant planets gaseous. So far the picture sharper arrived Charon own concerns. Here too few craters and a large crack in the equatorial zone. At the North Pole there is an area of ​​darker color has been called Mordor, as the land of evil in the Lord of the Rings.

Hydrogen and helium

From the first What analysis teaches us The Pluto-Charon system? “From Pluto hydrogen and helium escaping from the atmosphere of the planet in the same way that occurred on Earth in the early ages after its formation. We can understand a lot about how you formed the Earth-Moon system and how Mars lost its atmosphere and its water, “said Alan Stern, chief scientist of New Horizon.

July 15, 2015 (modified July 16, 2015 | 00:49)

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED