REAL LIFE NEWS: PLUTO’S MOON ONCE HAD AN UNDERGROUND OCEAN
by Hazed
NASA scientists examining pictures of Pluto’s moon Charon have found evidence that it once had a subterranean ocean, which then froze and turned to ice, bursting through the surface of the moon.
The pictures, which have been sent back to Earth by the New Horizons spacecraft, show that Charon has a fractured landscape, with numerous ridges, scarps and valleys.
What they think happened is that when the moon was still in its early stages, millions of years ago, its surface was kept warm by the heat produced by radioactive elements decaying, as well as residual heat left over from the moon’s formation. This would have melted any water ice on the surface, and the resulting liquid would have seeped down to create the underground ocean.
But over time the moon cooled, so this ocean turned to ice, which meant it expanded. This would have lifted the outmost layers of the moon’s surface, creating the massive chasms seen on the surface.
NASA says that this would have caused the surface to “stretch and fracture on a massive scale.”
Source: http://gizmodo.com/frozen-oceans-may-have-burst-through-surface-of-plutos-1760097813
