Dwarf planet Pluto got its heart from a collision
Published: Monday, Apr 15th 2024, 14:40
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An international team of researchers led by the University of Bern has solved the mystery of the so-called heart on the dwarf planet Pluto. The heart-shaped structure is the result of a slow, oblique impact of an impact body.
Pluto may no longer be considered one of the largest planets in our solar system, but it still manages to fascinate. Especially after a camera from NASA's New Horizons mission discovered a large, heart-shaped structure on the surface of the dwarf planet in 2015.
The "heart" of Pluto also keeps scientists busy. Using numerical simulations, two teams from the University of Bern and the American University of Arizona in Tucson have now investigated the formation of this heart structure.
Slow process
The elongated shape of the main part of the structure strongly suggests that there was a collision with another celestial body in Pluto's early history. This was not a head-on collision, but an oblique impact, explained the initiator of the study, Marin Jutzi, in a press release issued by the University of Bern on Monday.
"We're used to thinking of planetary collisions as incredibly intense events where you can ignore the details, except for things like energy, momentum and density. But in the distant solar system, the speeds are so much slower and the solid ice so strong that you have to be much more precise in your calculations. That's where the fun starts," the co-author of the study, Erik Asphaug, is quoted as saying in the press release.
Pluto's core was so cold that the rock did not melt despite the heat of the impact. The hardness of the core and the low speed put the researchers on the right track. In their simulations, they were able to digitally reproduce such impacts. The results confirmed the assumption of an oblique impact angle.
The question of the ocean
According to the University of Bern, the current study also sheds new light on Pluto's inner structure. Until now, a subterranean ocean was assumed to exist in Pluto's interior. However, the latest investigations also allow a different view, namely that there is no underground ocean or only a very thin one.
The impact body on Pluto must have had a diameter of about 700 kilometers, which is about twice the size of Switzerland from east to west.
The Swiss-American research team published its findings in the journal "Nature Astronomy".
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