Nature Video
17 December 2021

Pluto’s mysterious polygons explained

Surface patterns seen by New Horizons mission are driven by sublimation.

Shamini Bundell

Shamini Bundell

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Polygonal shapes cover the icy surface of Pluto’s Sputnik Planitia region. The patterns, photographed by NASA’s New Horizons mission, are thought to be the result of slow-moving convection currents in the ice. Now, a new model shows that the driving force behind these currents is likely to be the sublimation of nitrogen ice into gas - an ongoing process on the surface of Sputnik Planitia.

Read the paper here.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-03792-w

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