The Southwest Research Institute (Texas, USA) revealed that the New Horizons spacecraft’s flyby of Pluto in July 2015 sent back a substantial amount of invaluable data about the planet to Earth.
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From NASA’s collected evidence, American scientists propose that a billion comets aggregated, undergoing various chemical transformations, to give rise to Pluto.
The Southwest Research Institute (Texas, USA) revealed that the New Horizons spacecraft’s flyby of Pluto in July 2015 sent back a substantial amount of invaluable data about the planet to Earth.
New evidence indicates its inheritance of familiar materials, akin to the substances found in comets also collected by NASA during the Rosetta mission in 2016. A mysterious event in the past brought together approximately a billion comets and other space entities, which over years and numerous chemical shifts, culminated in the formation of Pluto as it appears today.
Notably, Christopher Glein, the lead researcher on Pluto, highlighted that data about the nitrogen-rich ice layer Sputnik Planitia on the planet suggests the potential presence of liquid water, even an ocean beneath the icy surface.
Furthermore, the new evidence also introduces an alternative theory that Pluto formed from extremely cold cosmic particles with chemical components akin to those of the Sun.