Since NASA’s New Horizons mission discover the large heart-shap structure on Pluto in 2015, scientists have been puzzl, mainly by its unique shape, but also by the heart’s composition and depth.
They ran numerous simulations to find out what the origin of Sputnik Planitia, the western teardrop-shap part of the structure, is. a gigantic and slow, oblique impact once took place. In the early years of Pluto, an enormous celestial body of about 700 kilometers in diameter must have slamm into the dwarf planet. The discovery also casts doubt on the previously suspect subsurface ocean on Pluto.
The heart, also known as the Tombaugh Region, not only immiately captur the imagination of the general public, but also grabb the attention of scientists because it is cover in a very bright white material that reflects more light than its surroundings, making the area appear whiter.
A slow impact
Sputnik Planitia has a surface area of 1,200 by 2,000 kilometers, equal to about a quarter of Europa. But this region is 3 to 4 kilometers lower than the rest of Pluto’s surface. “The brightness of Sputnik Planitia is because this hole is fill phone number library with white nitrogen ice that moves to constantly keep the surface smooth and flat. This nitrogen probably accumulat quickly after the impact due to the lower altitude,” explains lead researcher Harry Ballantyne of the University of Bern .
The eastern part of the core is also cover by a layer of nitrogen ice, although much thinner. The origin of this is still unclear, but it probably also has to do with Sputnik Planitia.
No head-on collision
The elongat shape of the area indicates that the impact was not a head-on collision, but occurr at an angle. Digital simulations in the era of rapidly developing were us to try to recreate the impact. In doing so, both the composition of Pluto and that of the meteorite vari, as did the spe and angle of the impact. The simulations confirm what the be numbers researchers already thought about the oblique angle of the impact and were also able to determine the composition of the celestial body.
