Pluto could harbor a subterranean icy ocean

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If you’re planning on visiting Pluto anytime soon, best to bring some warm boots. A frigid, possibly “slushy” subsurface ocean could be lurking under the crust of the dwarf planet, according to a new study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Scientists are interested in a region of Pluto known as Sputnik Planitia, a basin covered with frozen nitrogen that could be anywhere from about two to six miles thick. Because this part of Pluto lines up with Charon, the dwarf planet’s biggest moon, scientists think that an icy ocean below the surface of this area could be producing a gravitational anomaly that explains the orientation between the two celestial bodies. NASA’s New Horizons probe, which whizzed by Pluto in 2015, provided the researchers with data.

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