Pluto's glaciers may be growing due to change in the dwarf planet's seasons: study

NASA's revolutionary New Horizons probe flew by Pluto in 2015. It photographed glaciers made of solid methane and nitrogen which were present on surface of icy dwarf planet. According to reports of .com, stunning ims captured by NASA’s interplanetary probe prompted many scientists to conduct new studies. New Horizons craft snapped pictures of Pluto’s breathtaking icy mountain peaks. In research that followed, scientists provided evidence that grains of methane and nitrogen in dwarf planet's glaciers were actually moving, expanding, and growing.

Source: NASA

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Glaciers on Pluto contains grains of methane, and y are moving

report furr stated that grains of methane move as temperatures rise. This indicates that glaciers might expand and grow as things warm up. And it’s t just Pluto’s methane particles that have intrigued scientific community on Earth. Both methane and nitrogen grains are showing similar behaviour, with respect to change in temperature.

Source: NASA

NASA reports claim that Pluto has a temperature of minus 418 to minus 364 degrees Fahrenheit, which is minus 250 to minus 220 Celsius. Even in its warmer seasons, Pluto is still about -220° C. .com report suggests that at this temperature both methane and nitrogen molecules are freely rotating in solids.

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se molecules are t bound toger very well. reports furr reveal, that considering fact, that methane and nitrogen molecules can flow at such extremely low temperatures is somewhere related to crystal structures of se molecules. According to .com report, Planetary Scientist Maynard-Casely who is head of this research has stated that nitrogen will actually have two crystal structures given range of temperatures seen on Pluto. She furr revealed that nitrogen’s story is really interesting, given that molecules have ability to cool into an ordered structure. If temperatures are slightly higher, around 44 Kelvin, which is minus 380.47° Fahrenheit, or minus 229.15° Celsius, nitrogen molecules can move freely rotating in a plastic state.

Source: NASA

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More about Pluto

Pluto lies billions of miles from Earth and floats in far icy reaches of solar system kwn as Kuiper Belt. According to NASA, Pluto takes a whopping 248 Earth years to complete each orbit around sun. Hence, demoting it from planet status, as according to International Astromical Union, every planet must have completed at least one revolution around Sun to be considered a planet. Moreover what lends Pluto its dwarf planet status is its incredibly small size. NASA’s New Horizon craft revealed that Pluto is only 1,473 miles or 2,370 kilometres in diameter. NASA furr states, that with a radius of 715 miles or 1,151 kilometres, Pluto is about 1/6 width of Earth.

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