AstroGeo Podcast: Pluto, a heart and four flavors of ice cream » AstroGeo » SciLogs

Pluto is a popular world. Ever since NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft swept past the dwarf planet on July 14, 2015, many people’s hearts have flocked to it. It was also found to have a heart sitting on its surface itself, albeit a very cold one. Because the mean temperature on Pluto’s surface with its huge heart-shaped glacier of nitrogen ice is just minus 229 °C.

Karl dives into the geology of Pluto in this episode of the podcast. Some knowledge of the distant world existed long before the New Horizons flyby. But it was only the data from the probe that showed how dynamically the dwarf planet changes over the course of a 248 Earth-year orbit around the sun. Four types of ice play an important role here: they glide over the surface as glaciers, sublimate into a thin atmosphere, form steep mountain slopes or break out of cryovolcanoes as icy lava.

episode picture: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

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