NASA seems to have figured out the nature of strange objects on the surface of a cold dwarf planet
NASA's New Horizons probe photographed Pluto's surface on July 14, 2015 - the so-called Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). Then on December 24, 2015, he shot with a high-resolution camera - the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), which made it possible to obtain clearer images of a huge ice-shaped plateau in the shape of a heart, named Sputnik Planum - in honor of the first Soviet artificial satellite. And both times, some strange objects hit the lenses. They seemed to move, leaving traces. One of the objects was even named a snail for its obvious resemblance to terrestrial brethren.
Icebergs drift across Pluto's nitrogen ocean, gathering in groups in separate places.
Take a closer look, and in fact: against a white background, a dark object is clearly visible, casting a shadow on a light surface. Isn't it a snail or a slug? Even legs are visible behind, horns in front. You can also see the traces that the creature left.
Scientists immediately assumed: "snails" and other objects sticking out of a flat surface are blocks of water ice covered with mud. Like, they are on top. And the other day NASA clarified: these are icebergs made of water ice. And they do not lie on top, but are drowned. They are drowned in about the same way as their terrestrial counterparts, drifting in the waters of the polar seas. And on Pluto, icebergs drift - not in water, but in frozen nitrogen.
The diameter of Pluto's icebergs reaches several kilometers. But only small protruding elevations are visible. The rest is at depth. After all, water ice is less dense than nitrogen ice.
NASA believes Pluto's icebergs have broken away from the local mountains. Some huddled in heaps reaching tens of kilometers across.
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The photo, which shows a "snail" - a drifting iceberg of a bizarre shape.
The very same plateau, according to scientists, is a reservoir several kilometers deep, filled with frozen nitrogen. Pluto is geologically active. Heat comes from the bowels, which heats the bottom. As a result, bubbles appear, which, when solidified, rise to the surface. And they form cells ranging in size from 16 to 40 kilometers across. They are visible in the pictures. The edges of these cells look like traces from local snails. And local icebergs can really move along them - drift.
“On Earth, volcanic lava behaves in a similar fashion,” explains William McKinnon, deputy lead of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team at the University of Washington. University in St. Louis).
Perhaps this jumble is also an iceberg.