https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. What processes during the formation of Pluto's largest moon, Charon, potentially led to it having cryovolcanism, and even an internal ocean? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC 2025) hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated the formation and evolution of Charon to ascertain whether it once possessed an internal ocean during its history and if this could have led to cryovolcanism based on images obtained by NASA's New Horizons probe. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-cryovolcanism-resurfacing-pluto-largest-moon.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 27 Jun 2025 11:26:52 EDT news670242410 The first observations of Pluto by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveal dramatic phenomena on its surface, like seasonal cycles of volatile ice redistribution across its surface, and material being pulled from its very atmosphere onto its main satellite, Charon—an eerie interaction that happens nowhere else in our solar system. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-crazy-idea-cooling-effects-pluto.html Astronomy Tue, 03 Jun 2025 12:53:04 EDT news668173981 Billions of years ago, in the frigid outer reaches of our solar system, two icy worlds collided. Rather than destroying each other in a cosmic catastrophe, they spun together like a celestial snowman, finally separating while remaining forever linked in orbit. This is how Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, originated, according to a University of Arizona study that challenges decades of scientific assumptions. https://phys.org/news/2025-01-newly-capture-mechanism-formation-pluto.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 06 Jan 2025 11:00:01 EST news655374421 Pluto may have been downgraded from full-planet status, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hold a special place in scientist's hearts. There are practical and sentimental reasons for that—Pluto has tantalizing mysteries to unlock that New Horizons, the most recent spacecraft to visit the system, only added to. To research those mysteries, a multidisciplinary team from dozens of universities and research institutes has proposed Persephone—a mission to the Pluto system that could last 50 years. https://phys.org/news/2024-11-mission-pluto-horizons.html Space Exploration Thu, 14 Nov 2024 14:10:11 EST news650815801 When the International Astronomical Union announced in 2006 that Pluto was being demoted from its status as the sun's ninth planet, many astronomers and non-experts alike were shocked. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-pluto-mission-south-african-astronomers.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 09 Sep 2024 15:05:04 EDT news645113101 There are plenty of crazy ideas for missions in the space exploration community. Some are just better funded than others. One of the early pathways to funding the crazy ideas is NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts. In 2017 and again in 2021, it funded a mission study of what most space enthusiasts would consider only a modestly ambitious goal but what those outside the community might consider outlandish—landing on Pluto. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-pluto.html Space Exploration Tue, 11 Jun 2024 15:10:08 EDT news637337401 An ocean of liquid water deep beneath the icy surface of Pluto is coming into focus thanks to new calculations by Alex Nguyen, a graduate student in Earth, environmental and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-peering-pluto-ocean-mathematical-images.html Planetary Sciences Tue, 21 May 2024 12:01:04 EDT news635511661 The mystery of how Pluto got a giant heart-shaped feature on its surface has finally been solved by an international team of astrophysicists led by the University of Bern and members of the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS. The team is the first to successfully reproduce the unusual shape with numerical simulations, attributing it to a giant and slow oblique-angle impact. https://phys.org/news/2024-04-astrophysicists-mystery-heart-feature-surface.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 15 Apr 2024 11:52:25 EDT news632400739 Universe Today has examined the potential for sending humans to Jupiter's icy moon, Europa, the planet Venus, and Saturn's largest moon, Titan, all despite their respective harsh environments and vast distances. These conversations with planetary science experts determined that humans traveling to these worlds in the foreseeable future could be possible, despite the harsh conditions and travel time, specifically to Titan. https://phys.org/news/2024-01-humans-pluto.html Space Exploration Mon, 08 Jan 2024 14:26:04 EST news623946361 Pluto with a super-cryovolcano? Why not! All the elements are there, just not in the way we normally think of volcanoes. And cryovolcanoes are the reason why Pluto's surface looks the way it does. A recent research paper explains why Pluto could be the home of the latest supervolcano discovery in the solar system. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-unusual-crater-pluto-supervolcano.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 23 Oct 2023 16:09:04 EDT news617296141 As elementary schoolers, we learned the order of the planets. Maybe your teacher even had a snappy mnemonic like "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" or "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos" after Pluto was axed from the planetary lineup. https://phys.org/news/2022-09-smallest-planet-pluto-closer-sizes.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 12 Sep 2022 16:35:42 EDT news582219340 Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Subject to memorization in school and known as the definitive planetary lineup, Pluto was included in the list until the International Astronomical Union determined it did not meet qualifications in 2006. https://phys.org/news/2022-08-pluto-planet-longer.html Astronomy Wed, 31 Aug 2022 14:31:02 EDT news581175061 In 1930, astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered the fabled "Ninth Planet" (or "Planet X") while working at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. The existence of this body had been predicted previously based on perturbations in the orbit of Uranus and Neptune. After receiving more than 1,000 suggestions from around the world, and a debate among the Observatory's staff, this newfound object was named Pluto—which was proposed by a young schoolgirl from Oxford (Venetia Burney). https://phys.org/news/2022-04-pluto-orbit-surprisingly-unstable.html Astronomy Thu, 21 Apr 2022 12:54:06 EDT news569764440 Strange lumpy terrain on Pluto unlike anything previously observed in the solar system indicates that giant ice volcanoes were active relatively recently on the dwarf planet, scientists said on Tuesday. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-giant-ice-volcanoes-pluto.html Planetary Sciences Tue, 29 Mar 2022 11:16:24 EDT news567771375 The world first glimpsed Pluto up close when NASA's New Horizons spacecraft whizzed by it in July 2015. One of the most exciting discoveries scientists made based on New Horizons data was that Pluto, despite orbiting at more than 5 billion kilometers from the sun, may contain a liquid water ocean under its water ice surface. https://phys.org/news/2022-02-clues-pluto-history-faults.html Planetary Sciences Tue, 01 Feb 2022 10:14:49 EST news562932885 What makes a planet a planet? The answer turns out to be rather contentious. The official definition of a planet, as defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) is that a planet must satisfy three conditions: https://phys.org/news/2021-11-moons-planets.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 03 Nov 2021 10:33:34 EDT news555154411 When Pluto passed in front of a star on the night of August 15, 2018, a Southwest Research Institute-led team of astronomers had deployed telescopes at numerous sites in the U.S. and Mexico to observe Pluto's atmosphere as it was briefly backlit by the well-placed star. Scientists used this occultation event to measure the overall abundance of Pluto's tenuous atmosphere and found compelling evidence that it is beginning to disappear, refreezing back onto its surface as it moves farther away from the Sun. https://phys.org/news/2021-10-scientists-decrease-pluto-atmospheric-density.html Astronomy Mon, 04 Oct 2021 11:07:03 EDT news552564417 In 2015, the New Horizons space probe discovered spectacular snowcapped mountains on Pluto, which are strikingly similar to mountains on Earth. Such a landscape had never before been observed elsewhere in the Solar System. However, as atmospheric temperatures on our planet decrease at altitude, on Pluto they heat up at altitude as a result of solar radiation. https://phys.org/news/2020-10-mountains-pluto-snowcapped-earth.html Space Exploration Tue, 13 Oct 2020 11:00:01 EDT news521799544 Planetary scientist Dr. Helen Maynard-Casely and associates have reported for the first time how solid methane and nitrogen expand in response to temperature changes and resolved an historic ambiguity relating to the structure of nitrogen. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-glaciers-solid-methane-nitrogen-pluto.html Space Exploration Thu, 06 Aug 2020 08:14:35 EDT news515920365 Five years ago today, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft made history. After a voyage of nearly 10 years and more than 3 billion miles, the intrepid piano-sized probe flew within 7,800 miles of Pluto. For the first time ever, we saw the surface of this distant world in spectacular, colored detail. https://phys.org/news/2020-07-cool-pluto-horizons.html Space Exploration Wed, 15 Jul 2020 08:57:43 EDT news514022259 The accretion of new material during Pluto's formation may have generated enough heat to create a liquid ocean that has persisted beneath an icy crust to the present day, despite the dwarf planet's orbit far from the sun in the cold outer reaches of the solar system. https://phys.org/news/2020-06-evidence-hot-scenario-early-ocean.html Space Exploration Mon, 22 Jun 2020 11:00:03 EDT news512023951 When the New Horizons spacecraft passed by Pluto in 2015, one of the many fascinating features its images revealed was that this small, frigid world in the distant solar system has a hazy atmosphere. Now, new data helps explain how Pluto's haze is formed from the faint light of the Sun 3.7 billion miles away as it moves through an unusual orbit. https://phys.org/news/2020-05-sofia-clues-hidden-pluto-haze.html Space Exploration Thu, 14 May 2020 08:12:55 EDT news508662773 Ninety years ago today, Clyde Tombaugh, a young astronomer working at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, discovered Pluto. In doing so he unknowingly opened the door to the vast "third zone" of the solar system we now know as the Kuiper Belt, containing countless planetesimals and dwarf planets—the third class of planets in our solar system. https://phys.org/news/2020-02-tombaugh-discovery-pluto-revolutionized-knowledge.html Space Exploration Wed, 19 Feb 2020 10:32:05 EST news501330721 A "beating heart" of frozen nitrogen controls Pluto's winds and may give rise to features on its surface, according to a new study. https://phys.org/news/2020-02-pluto-icy-heart.html Space Exploration Tue, 04 Feb 2020 11:19:52 EST news500037586 NASA has funded Southwest Research Institute to study the important attributes, feasibility and cost of a possible future Pluto orbiter mission. This study will develop the spacecraft and payload design requirements and make preliminary cost and risk assessments for new technologies. https://phys.org/news/2019-10-swri-pluto-orbiter-mission.html Space Exploration Wed, 30 Oct 2019 13:49:39 EDT news491662174 Pluto was discovered in 1930 by astronomer Clyde Tombaugh. For decades, not much detail was known about the erstwhile planet. We assumed it was a frozen, dormant world. https://phys.org/news/2019-10-horizons-team-pieces-images-pluto.html Space Exploration Mon, 28 Oct 2019 09:40:02 EDT news491471361 Many of the craters of Mars and Pluto feature relatively small ice islands unattached to their polar ice caps. https://phys.org/news/2019-09-ice-islands-mars-pluto-reveal.html Space Exploration Tue, 24 Sep 2019 08:10:01 EDT news488531063 Using sophisticated computer simulations and observations, a team led by researchers from the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Tokyo Institute of Technology has shown how the so-called trans-Neptunian objects (or TNOs) may have formed. TNOs, which include the dwarf planet Pluto, are a group of icy and rocky small bodies—smaller than planets, but larger than comets—that orbit the solar system beyond the planet Neptune. TNOs likely formed at the same time as the solar system, and understanding their origin could provide important clues as to how the entire solar system originated. https://phys.org/news/2019-06-icy-outer-solar-satellites.html Astronomy Tue, 25 Jun 2019 08:37:21 EDT news480670634 A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in the U.S. and one in France has found evidence of ammonia on the surface of Pluto. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their finding and what it might have revealed about the dwarf planet. https://phys.org/news/2019-05-ammonia-surface-pluto-hints-subterranean.html Astronomy Thu, 30 May 2019 08:30:01 EDT news478422979 Whenever it passes in front of a star, Pluto provides precious information about its atmosphere, precious because occultations by Pluto are rare. The survey achieved by researchers from Paris Observatory over several decades of observations appears in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics of May 10, 2019. Interpreted in the light of data collected in 2015 by the probe New Horizons, it allows them to refine physical parameters that are essential for a better understanding of Pluto's climate and to predicting future stellar occultations by the dwarf planet. https://phys.org/news/2019-05-pluto-analysis-years.html Space Exploration Tue, 14 May 2019 07:16:31 EDT news477036962