{"id":19473,"date":"2016-02-05T00:11:03","date_gmt":"2016-02-04T16:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/weird-new-horizons-probe-spots-islands-of-water-ice-floating-in-nitrogen-slush\/"},"modified":"2016-02-05T00:11:03","modified_gmt":"2016-02-04T16:11:03","slug":"weird-new-horizons-probe-spots-islands-of-water-ice-floating-in-nitrogen-slush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/weird-new-horizons-probe-spots-islands-of-water-ice-floating-in-nitrogen-slush\/","title":{"rendered":"Weird! New Horizons probe spots islands of water ice floating in nitrogen slush"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Pluto's
This image focuses in on a part of Pluto\u2019s heart-shaped region where hills of water ice appear to be floating on top of a nitrogen glacier. Challenger Colles, toward the top of the inset photo, is a wide cluster of water-ice hills. (Credit: NASA \/ JHUAPL \/ SwRI)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There\u2019s plenty of evidence that Pluto is a frozen water world, with mountains of ice that rise more than 10,000 feet in height, but here\u2019s something even weirder: Huge chunks of frozen H2<\/sub>O appear to be floating in a sea of frozen nitrogen, like icebergs in Earth\u2019s polar regions.<\/p>\n

Those are among the findings reported today in this week\u2019s update from NASA\u2019s New Horizons mission. The piano-sized New Horizons spacecraft collected gigabytes\u2019 worth of observations last year during its July 14 flyby, and it\u2019s been sending back data ever since then.<\/p>\n

\"pluto\"
\nScience journalist Alan Boyle<\/strong> is the author of “The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made A Big Difference.”<\/p>\n

The Plutonian icebergs dot a vast plain in the bright heart-shaped region that\u2019s informally known as Sputnik Planum. They measure anywhere between a mile to several miles in width.<\/p>\n

New Horizons\u2019 science team suggests that the hill-like chunks have been broken away from the neighboring uplands and are being carried along by the flow of Sputnik Planum\u2019s nitrogen glaciers. The blobs of frozen water float on top because they\u2019re less dense than the frozen nitrogen. In some areas, you can see chains on chunks moving along channels in the glaciers.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a particularly large cluster of debris in an area that\u2019s about 37 by 22 miles across, up near the notch in Pluto\u2019s heart. The chunks may have clustered there because they \u201cwashed up\u201d on a strand where the nitrogen slush is shallow, New Horizons\u2019 scientists say.<\/p>\n

The cluster has been nicknamed Challenger Colles in honor of the crew of the space shuttle Challenger, which blew apart in 1986. Just one week ago, NASA marked the 30th anniversary of the Challenger shuttle disaster. It\u2019s not yet clear whether the Challenger nickname will endure \u2014 but the tribute holds true for this year, at least.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This image focuses in on a part of Pluto\u2019s heart-shaped region where hills of water ice appear to be floating on top of a nitrogen glacier. Challenger Colles, toward the top of the inset photo, is a wide cluster of water-ice hills. (Credit: NASA \/ JHUAPL \/ SwRI) There\u2019s plenty of evidence that Pluto is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2840,190,4809,2174,2848],"class_list":["post-19473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-dwarf-planets","tag-nasa","tag-nasa-new-horizons","tag-new-horizons","tag-pluto"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19473"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}