An Update on Pluto

Pictures and data are continuing to come back from the sensors on New Horizons that zoomed past Pluto in July of this year.  Here are some open questions that have been raised about the planet:

• There’s a large area on the surface of Pluto that doesn’t have any craters.  Scientists don’t know why.  They think there is a lot of heat and volcanic activity, but this is uncertain. Pluto is getting heat from somewhere other than just from the sun, which is far away.

• The surface of Pluto may contain hotspots that may be the cause of the patchiness of some of the Plutonian surface.

• Water ice is as hard as a rock in the extreme cold of the surface of Pluto.  But what pushed that icy rock into mountains 11,000 feet high?

• Pluto has a thin atmosphere and scientists are having a hard time explaining whether it gets thinner when Pluto’s elliptical orbit moves it farthest from the sun.

• Pluto’s atmosphere has layers of haze that scientists aren’t able to explain.  The surfaceof the planet shows what look like wind streaks across dunes.

More (including a computerized video) from National Geographic at:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151015-pluto-probe-space-planets-report/