Almost one year ago, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft completed a successful flyby of Pluto as the probe is now transmitting a deluge of data and high resolution images back home. Now, this latest image revealing the dwarf planet's "heart" has more than meets the eye.

Like Us on Facebook

Pluto's heart or Sputnik Planum can be seen as vast, frozen plains, which has a curious absence of impact craters where scientists reveal the mysterious geological processes that shaped this feature, as bizarre polygonal shapes appeared measuring at six to 24 miles in diameter.

In two new studies, scientists suggest that this frozen heart of Pluto might still be "beating" or replenishing its surface every so often with new ice which can also be considered as the youngest surfaces on any world in our solar system.

According to lead author of the study, William B. McKinnon from Washington University, for the first time ever, the strange welts that have been determined on the surface of Pluto are now identified.

These mysterious polygons on Pluto's heart are apparently generated by some rising bubbles created by a heating system below the surface, based on models created by two research teams. Across Sputnik Planum, which is mostly made from nitrogen ice, there are several hotspots that are being heated from several miles deep, by a very slow process that is caused by a convection of decaying radioactive elements deep within the core of the dwarf planet.

In Pluto, nitrogen is considered solid that can become malleable and can flow in a sluggish, viscous state like lava. When this flowing, frozen nitrogen is slowly heated, some parts of it rise to the surface similar to those blobs inside a lava lamp. After some time, these bubbles will cool down and sink below again which will be replenished by some new bubbles.

Researchers also say that these cells can also fuse together in sets before they sink to the bottom again, creating some sort of polygonal line shapes and patterns on the plains. They also add that these bubbles form in a very slow process, so slow, that it can take some 500,000 years or 1 million years to reform again however, in geological terms this is quite fast, since Pluto is so distant from the sun's energy.

These two new studies are published in the journal Nature.

TagsNASA New Horizons, Pluto new horizons, pluto heart, polygon shapes pluto heart, sputnik planum