In July 2015 we get our first close look at the dwarf planet Pluto and its moon, Charon — a fact that has scientists hypothesizing more than ever about what we might see there.
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Pluto Gets Demoted
Astronomy leaders vote to take away Pluto’s planetary status, leaving the solar system with eight celestial bodies.
One of the latest ideas put forward is that perhaps the collision that likely formed Pluto and Charon heated the interior of Pluto enough to give it an internal liquid water ocean, which also gave the small world a short-lived plate tectonics system, like that of Earth.
ANALYSIS: Pluto’s New Moons Get Names From Hell
“We predict that when New Horizons gets there it will see evidence of ancient tectonism,” said Brown University’s Amy Barr, coauthor of a new paper with Geoffrey Collins in the latest issue of the journal Icarus. By ‘ancient’ Barr means sometime way back during the first billion years of the solar system’s history.
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