Latest / Boring Science / Pluto Is Stranger Than You Think _ What NASA Found Beyond Neptune

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Pluto Is Stranger Than You Think _ What NASA Found Beyond Neptune · Boring Science

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Boring Science to Sleep, a quiet
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place where science becomes slow, soft, and easy to drift through. Tonight,
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you're going to gently explore what NASA found on Pluto,
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not to learn everything about this distant little world, but
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simply to notice it, slowly, calmly, one quiet detail at
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a time. Before you settle in, if you truly enjoy
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these calm journeys through interesting facts about science, You're welcome
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to like this video and subscribe, only if it feels
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right for you. And when you're ready, let me know
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in the comments where you're listening from and what time
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it is right now. It's always a quiet joy to
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see how many places and moments gather here together. Now,
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dim the lights, perhaps let a fan hum softly in
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the background and allow your breathing to become a little slower.
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There is nothing you need to remember tonight. There is
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nothing you need to do You are safe, you can
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simply listen and drift. And somewhere far beyond the familiar planets,
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where sunlight has become faint and the darkness is wide,
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a small frozen world is moving quietly around the sun.
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Its name is Pluto. And for a long time, we
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thought we knew what Pluto was. Perhaps we were wrong.
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Perhaps we simply had not looked closely enough. You may
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remember Pluto as the ninth planet. For many years, that
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was the simple picture, the one quietly placed at the
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outer edge of the solar system, after Neptune, small and distant,
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circling the sun in the cold. And perhaps when you
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imagined the solar system as a child, you imagined a
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neat little family, with the planets following one another in order,
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each with its own place, each belonging to a familiar category.
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But the solar system has never been quite that tidy.
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The way we name worlds has changed many times, as
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our ability to see them has changed. In the 19th century,
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astronomers could identify objects in the sky that seemed to
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deserve names and categories of their own. As more objects
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were discovered, the old definitions became less comfortable. What counted
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as a planet slowly became a question that needed a
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more careful answer. Then, in 1930… a young and largely
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self-taught astronomer named Clyde Tombaugh began searching for something that
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astronomers had called Planet X, a hypothetical distant world that
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might explain strange movements observed in the outer solar system.
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Night after night he compared photographs of the stars. Ten
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months passed, most of the points of light remained exactly
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where they seemed to belong, and then, among those countless
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distant stars, one tiny point appeared to have moved. It
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was faint. It was slow. It was far beyond Neptune.
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Tombaugh had been looking for a new planet, and at
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the time, this small moving world appeared to fit the description.
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So Pluto entered our imagination as the ninth planet. For decades,
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Pluto remained there, at the quiet edge of the planetary family.
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But while we were looking at Pluto from very far away,
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we did not yet know something important. Pluto was not alone.
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Beyond Neptune is a vast region filled with small, cold objects,
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remnants of the early solar system moving through deep darkness. Today,
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we call this region the Kuiper Belt, and Pluto is
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one member of it. It is not even the largest
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object in this distant population. One reason Pluto was noticed
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so early is that its surface reflects a surprising amount
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of sunlight, making the little world appear brighter and more
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prominent than many of its neighbours. From Earth, all of
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this distance becomes compressed into a tiny point of light.
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You look upward, and Pluto is nowhere to be seen
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with your unaided eyes. Yet, somewhere beyond the familiar planets,
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it is there, moving, turning, waiting. And then, in 2006…
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Our definition of a planet changed. A planet, according to
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the new definition, needed not only to orbit the Sun,
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but also to have enough gravitational influence to dominate the
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region around its path. You can imagine this gently, not
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as a cosmic battle, but as a large object gradually
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becoming the main presence in its neighbourhood, while smaller objects
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remain gathered around it. Pluto did not meet that final condition.
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It remained a world but it became classified as a
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dwarf planet. Nothing physical happened to Pluto that day. Its
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mountains did not disappear, its frozen plains did not change.
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Its long journey around the Sun continued exactly as before,
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only our description of it changed. And perhaps that is
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one of the quiet lessons hidden inside Pluto. Sometimes a
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name changes because we have discovered that the world is
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more complicated than the name allowed. Pluto itself has always
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been moving along its unusual path. Its orbit around the
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Sun is stretched rather than nearly circular, and it is
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tilted by about 17 degrees compared with the broad plane
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followed by most of the planets. So Pluto does not
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simply travel around the Sun along the same flat road.
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Its path rises above and falls below that familiar plane,
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carrying it through a much larger, stranger loop. and it
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takes Pluto about 248 Earth years to complete that journey.
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Imagine that for a moment. A human lifetime is only
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a small portion of one Pluto year. A child born
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on Pluto would grow old without seeing a complete revolution
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around the Sun. And during parts of its long journey,
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Pluto can travel closer to the Sun than Neptune. Even
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its path refuses to fit neatly into the picture we
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once had. Yet from such a great distance, all of
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this complexity remained hidden. Pluto looked small. It looked quiet.
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It looked frozen. It looked almost alone. Then humanity began
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building a machine that could travel there. A small spacecraft
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called New Horizons was launched in 2006, the very year
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Pluto's classification changed. Its purpose was wonderfully simple. Go farther
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than we had ever gone before. Reach Pluto, and finally
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see what this distant world was actually like. The journey
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would take years. But for Pluto, years are almost nothing.
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It had already been travelling around the sun for billions
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of years, quietly following its tilted path through the cold.
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And now, for the first time, something made by you
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was coming toward it. Something carrying cameras. Something carrying instruments.
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something carrying the questions of an entire planet. Far ahead,
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Pluto was still only a tiny point of light, and
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as new horizons moved deeper into the darkness, that point
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would slowly begin to grow. Not quickly, not dramatically, just
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a little more with every passing day, until the distant
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point became a world, and when that happened, Pluto would
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no longer be simply the little object we once called
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the ninth planet. It would become something much stranger, much
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more beautiful, and much more alive than anyone could see
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from Earth. You can imagine Earth becoming smaller behind you,
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not all at once, not dramatically, just slowly, quietly, until
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the familiar blue world begins to feel like something far away.
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In 2006, while Pluto was being given a new place
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in our understanding of the solar system, a small spacecraft
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was beginning a journey toward it. Its name was New Horizons.
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The distance to Pluto was the greatest obstacle. There was
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no road to follow, no station waiting halfway there, no
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place to stop and rest. Only darkness, gravity, and a
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destination moving through the outer solar system. so New Horizons
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left Earth with an enormous burst of speed. The spacecraft
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itself was relatively small, weighing about 1,000 pounds, but it
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was placed on a powerful Atlas V rocket, carrying it
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away from Earth with enough energy to begin one of
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the fastest departures ever made by a spacecraft toward the
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outer solar system. And then something remarkable happened. Only about
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nine hours after leaving Earth, New Horizons was already passing
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the distance of the moon. You can let that distance
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settle quietly in your mind. The moon, which usually seems
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so far away when you look at it from your window,
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was already behind the spacecraft. Earth was behind it too.
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And ahead there was only the long darkness. The spacecraft
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continued outward, carrying cameras, instruments, and a quiet collection of questions.
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What would Pluto look like? Would it be smooth? Would
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it be covered in ancient craters? Would it simply be
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a frozen, inactive remnant from the early solar system? At
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this point, no one could really know, so New Horizons
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kept moving. And after about a year, another world appeared ahead. Jupiter,
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the largest planet in our solar system. For a little while,
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New Horizons turned its attention to this enormous planet and
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its many moons. Its cameras were tested. Images were taken.
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Among them was a remarkable view of volcanic activity on Io,
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one of Jupiter's moons. For a spacecraft travelling toward Pluto,
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this was an unexpected moment of discovery. a quiet reminder
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that even while travelling toward one distant world, other worlds
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could briefly appear along the way. But Jupiter had another purpose.
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Its immense gravity could help New Horizons travel farther. You
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can imagine the spacecraft approaching the giant planet, not stopping,
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not landing, not being captured, but passing through the region
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where Jupiter's gravity could gently alter its path and increase
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its speed. Scientists call this a gravity assist. The phrase
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sounds technical, but the idea is quite simple. A spacecraft
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can borrow a little of the motion of a planet
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as it passes nearby, changing its own speed and direction
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without needing to carry enough fuel to provide all of
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that movement by itself. Jupiter became a kind of gravitational
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stepping stone. New horizons passed by, received its gentle push,
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and continued onward. And then the darkness became larger, much larger.
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The planets of the inner solar system were falling farther behind.
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The sun was becoming smaller in the distance. The warmth
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and brightness that define our familiar neighbourhood were gradually becoming
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less noticeable. Ahead, Pluto was still waiting. Even after the
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help from Jupiter, New Horizons needed about eight more years
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to cross the outer solar system before reaching Pluto. Eight years.
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For you, eight years can contain childhood memories, new homes,
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different jobs, friendships, seasons, ordinary mornings, quiet evenings, and countless
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small changes. For Pluto, eight years are barely a breath.
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It continued along its enormous orbit. The spacecraft continued along
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its own path, two travellers moving through the same solar system.
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separated by billions of kilometres of darkness. And during those
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long years, New Horizons became almost like a tiny moving room.
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Inside it, instruments waited, cameras waited, computers waited. The spacecraft
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simply continued forward. There was no sound of an engine
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roaring through space. There was no wind against its body.
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Nothing around it rushed past in the way that air
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rushes past a car. It moved through a nearly empty environment,
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surrounded by darkness and distant points of light. And slowly,
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very slowly, Pluto began to come closer. At first it
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was only another tiny point, then the cameras could begin
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to distinguish it more clearly. And eventually, another small point
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appeared nearby. Charon, Pluto's largest moon. Two faint lights, separated
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from the background stars. At first they were only points.
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Then they began to grow. Day by day, image by image,
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the distant points became recognisable. There was Pluto, and beside
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Pluto was Charon. The first close encounter with these worlds
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was finally approaching. For nearly a decade, New Horizons had
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been travelling through the darkness toward this moment, and yet
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the spacecraft still had only a short time to see them.
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It would not enter orbit around Pluto and remain there
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for years. It would pass through the system, gather as
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much information as possible, and continue onward. So there was
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no time to waste, even though the journey itself had
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been so slow. Everything the spacecraft had carried across that
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enormous distance was about to become important. The cameras would
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begin looking more closely. The instruments would begin measuring the
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faint atmosphere. The surfaces would begin to reveal their colours
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and shapes, and the two tiny points of light would
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finally become worlds. You can imagine new horizons approaching now,
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still moving silently, with Pluto growing larger ahead, the sun
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far behind, the stars surrounding you. And somewhere in that
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deep darkness, a small frozen world is waiting to show
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you something no human eye has ever seen from such
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a close distance. Not a simple ball of ice, not
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merely a former planet, but a landscape, a sky, moving ice, mountains, haze,
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and perhaps, hidden beneath all that frozen quiet, something even warmer.
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As New Horizons continued toward Pluto, the distant point of
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light slowly became easier to recognise, and then, beside it,
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another point appeared. It was smaller, fainter, but it was there, Charon,
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Pluto's largest moon. From a great distance, the two worlds
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might have looked like nothing more than a pair of
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tiny lights resting together in the darkness. But the closer
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New Horizons came, the stranger their relationship became. Charon is
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roughly half the size of Pluto, which is unusually large
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for a moon, compared with the world it accompanies. And
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Charon stays remarkably close. The distance between the two worlds
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is less than 20,000 kilometres, while our own moon is
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almost 400,000 kilometres from Earth. You can let that difference
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settle quietly in your imagination. When you look at the
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moon from Earth, it feels like a distant companion, hanging
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far away in the night sky. But if you could
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somehow stand on Pluto, Charon would feel much closer. It
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would be a constant presence in the darkness, and there
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would be something unusual about the way it appeared. Charon
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does not slowly wander across Pluto's sky in the way
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our moon moves across Earth's. Instead, Pluto and Charon have
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become locked together. Each world keeps the same side facing
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the other. Scientists call this mutual tidal locking, but you
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do not need to hold on to the technical phrase.
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You can simply imagine two worlds turning together, each showing
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the other the same face, again and again, for an
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extraordinarily long time. If you were standing on the side
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of Pluto that faces Charon, you would always see the
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same moon in the same part of the sky. It
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would not rise in the east. It would not slowly
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cross overhead. It would simply remain there, suspended in the darkness.
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And if you walked around to the far side of Pluto,
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Charon would disappear completely. Not because the moon had moved away,
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not because the moon had set, but because Pluto itself
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would now be between you and Charon. There is something
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wonderfully quiet about that arrangement. Two worlds close together, two
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worlds turning slowly, two worlds each keeping the same face
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toward the other. And yet their strange relationship becomes even
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more interesting when you look at the way they move
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through space. You might naturally imagine Charon circling Pluto, the
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way our moon circles Earth. But Pluto and Charon are
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more evenly matched. Charon is large enough, compared with Pluto,
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that their combined centre of mass lies between the two
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worlds rather than deep inside Pluto. The centre of mass
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is simply the point around which the two bodies balance
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as they move together. You can picture it as an
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invisible point floating in the darkness between them. Pluto moves
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around that point. Charon moves around that point too. So,
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rather than imagining a large planet sitting still while a
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smaller moon circles around it, you can imagine two worlds
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quietly moving around an empty place between them. There is
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no little object there, no hidden star, no tiny dark planet,
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nothing that you could see, just the balance created by gravity.
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The source describes how the unusual movement can appear almost
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as though the two worlds are circling a point in
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empty space. And perhaps that is a gentler way to
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picture gravity. Not always as something pulling dramatically. Sometimes gravity
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simply arranges things. It gives two worlds a shared rhythm.
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It keeps them together. It allows them to move through
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darkness without drifting completely apart. For a moment... Imagine yourself
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floating between Pluto and Charon. There is no ground beneath you,
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no air moving past your face, no sound, only the
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pale surfaces of two distant worlds, suspended against a black sky.
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Pluto on one side, Charon on the other, and between them,
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that quiet, invisible point around which their combined motion is balanced.
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You might notice that neither world seems to be rushing.
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Of course they are moving, they are travelling through the
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solar system, following their enormous path around the sun. But
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from your imagined position between them, the motion feels almost imperceptible.
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A slow turning, a patient relationship, a dance too slow
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for human eyes to notice in a single moment. And
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that slowness is important, because Pluto and Charon have been
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together for an immense stretch of time. The source suggests
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that their unusual relationship may have begun through an ancient collision,
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when the young worlds encountered one another early in the
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history of the solar system, That idea will become important later,
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but for now, you can simply let it remain as
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a quiet possibility. Perhaps, long ago, two young worlds met
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in the darkness. Perhaps the encounter changed both of them.
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And perhaps, instead of separating completely, they remained together. Now,
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billions of years later, they continue their slow gravitational relationship.
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Two worlds, one shared rhythm. one invisible point between them.
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And while New Horizons was observing this strange arrangement, something
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else was beginning to appear in its cameras. The spacecraft
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was getting close enough to see Pluto itself. Not merely
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as a bright point, not as a small dot beside Charon,
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but as a landscape. At first the details were faint.
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Then shapes began to emerge, light and shadow, bright regions,
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dark regions, hints of colour, and slowly the simple image
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of a frozen ball began to disappear. Pluto was becoming
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a place, a place with mountains and plains, a place
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with ice that could move, a place with a thin
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atmosphere above its surface, a place whose colours were far
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more complicated than anyone might have expected, and somewhere within
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those first images was a shape that would soon become
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one of the most recognisable features in the distant solar system,
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a great pale heart, quietly appearing across Pluto's surface. As
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New Horizons came closer, Pluto began to lose its appearance
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as a distant point of light. The small world was
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becoming a landscape, and the first thing you might notice
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is that Pluto is not simply white, it is not
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a perfectly smooth blue sphere. and it is not the
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featureless frozen ball that people once imagined when they thought
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about a world so far from the sun. Instead, its
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surface carries many different shades. There are pale regions, bright
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white areas, soft blues, darker patches, yellowish tones, and broad
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regions of reddish and burnt orange colour. The colours are subtle,
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softened by the enormous distance from the sun, but they
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are there. And as the images from New Horizons became clearer,
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one feature seemed almost impossible to miss. A great pale
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shape stretched across part of Pluto. A heart. It was enormous.
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Not a small mark on the surface, but a broad
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region covering a substantial portion of the visible side. Within
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this heart-shaped area lies a vast frozen plane called Sputnik Planitia.
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You do not need to remember the name. you can
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simply imagine a wide, pale landscape extending beneath a distant,
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weak sun, a frozen plain so large that it is
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difficult to imagine its full size from the ground. The
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source describes the plain as roughly comparable in area to
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the state of Texas. But the most interesting thing about
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Sputnik Planitia may not be its size. It is how
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young it appears. When a surface sits exposed in space
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for billions of years, you would expect it to collect scars.
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Small impacts. Large impacts. Dark marks where pieces of rock
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and ice have struck the ground. The surface of many
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old planetary bodies becomes something like a quiet record of time,
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with each crater preserving a small memory of an ancient collision.
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But parts of Pluto do not seem to carry many
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of those scars. The Great Plane is remarkably smooth. And
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that tells you something. The surface may not have been
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sitting quietly for all of Pluto's history. Something has been
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changing it, something has been smoothing it, something has been
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renewing it. You can imagine the surface as a frozen
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landscape that slowly forgets its oldest marks. A crater appears,
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time passes, ice moves, the crater becomes softer, and eventually
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the surface looks young again. Scientists describe this as geological activity,
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but you can think of it more simply as Pluto
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slowly changing beneath the darkness. And then comes one of
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the strangest discoveries. The ice on Pluto can move. At first,
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this sounds almost impossible. Pluto is extraordinarily cold, so cold
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that the kind of water ice you might imagine on
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Earth becomes extremely rigid there, more like hard stone than
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something that could slowly flow. But Pluto has other kinds
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of ice. One of the most important is frozen nitrogen.
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Nitrogen is a gas here on Earth, surrounding you every moment,
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quietly filling much of the air you breathe. On Pluto,
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in the extreme cold of the distant solar system, nitrogen
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can freeze into a solid, and under the right conditions,
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that frozen nitrogen can slowly move. Not quickly, not like
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water flowing through a river. not like snow sliding down
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a mountain. It moves with the patient slowness of a
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landscape changing over immense stretches of time. Imagine standing at
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the edge of Sputnik Planitia. The plain looks completely still.
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There is no sound, no wind brushing against your clothing,
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no warmth beneath your feet, only the faint sunlight and
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the pale surface stretching toward the horizon. Yet beneath that
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quiet surface, the nitrogen ice is slowly shifting. Material can
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move from higher ground toward lower regions, creating broad glacier-like flows.
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The source describes nitrogen ice behaving as a kind of
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slow-moving glacier, flowing into lower areas and helping reshape Pluto's surface.
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And across Sputnik Planitia, there are enormous polygonal patterns. From above,
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they look almost like giant pieces of a softly divided landscape.
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But these shapes are not simply painted onto the surface.
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They are connected with slow movement within the nitrogen ice.
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Warmer material from deeper within the ice can slowly rise.
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Cooler material can sink. The movement is gentle, continuous, and
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almost invisible. Scientists call this process convection, but you do
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not need to imagine anything violent. It is closer to
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a very slow breathing motion beneath the surface. Upward, downward,
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again and again. So the frozen plane that looks motionless
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from a distance is not truly motionless at all. It
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is changing. Very slowly, so slowly that an entire human
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life would barely notice the movement. And yet over thousands, millions,
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perhaps much longer periods of time, those tiny changes can
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reshape an enormous landscape. This is one of the quiet
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surprises of Pluto. Cold does not always mean still. A
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frozen world can have moving glaciers. A plane can renew itself.
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And an apparently silent surface can carry slow movements beneath it.
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The heart-shaped region becomes even more beautiful when you think
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about it this way. It is not merely a bright
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mark that happens to resemble a heart. It is part
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of a world that is still changing. A world where
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ice can travel. A world where the surface can soften
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ancient scars. A world where the cold itself becomes part
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of the motion. And as you remain there for a moment,
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looking across the pale plain, you might begin to notice
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something else. The surface is not the whole story. Above
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the ice, Pluto has something even more delicate. An atmosphere.
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It is so thin and faint that you would hardly
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know it was there. and yet it rises above this
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frozen landscape, changing as Pluto follows its long journey around
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the Sun. The same world that appears silent beneath your
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feet is quietly releasing material into the darkness above. The
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ice moves below, the atmosphere moves above, and between them,
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Pluto continues its slow, almost imperceptible transformation. Above the frozen plane,
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where the nitrogen ice moves so slowly that you would
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never notice it from the ground, another kind of movement
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is taking place. It is almost invisible. There is no
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blue sky stretching overhead like the one you know on Earth.
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There are no clouds drifting gently across a warm afternoon.
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There is hardly any air at all. And yet Pluto
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does have an atmosphere. It begins quietly, close to the
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frozen surface. Some of the ice resting on Pluto can
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respond to the changing warmth of sunlight by becoming gas.
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There is something unusual about this process. The ice does
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not have to melt first. It can move directly from
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a solid state into a gas. Scientists call this process sublimation.
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But you can simply imagine the surface slowly releasing a
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little of itself into the darkness. A patch of frozen
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nitrogen rests beneath the distant sun. The sunlight touches it.
29:51
Some of the material becomes gas. The gas rises, and
29:56
for a while, It becomes part of Pluto's extremely thin atmosphere.
30:01
It is a quiet exchange between the ground and the sky.
30:04
Ice becomes gas. Gas moves through the atmosphere. And under
30:09
different conditions, some of that material can eventually return to
30:13
the surface. The source describes this relationship between Pluto's surface
30:17
and atmosphere as an ongoing cycle, with nitrogen and other
30:22
materials moving between frozen ground and the thin air above it.
30:27
You can imagine the process happening so slowly that Pluto
30:30
itself seems to breathe, not with lungs, not with anything alive,
30:36
but with the gentle rise and return of frozen material.
30:40
The surface gives something to the atmosphere, the atmosphere carries
30:44
it for a while, and eventually some of it may
30:47
settle back onto the world. The atmosphere is mostly nitrogen,
30:51
with smaller amounts of methane and carbon monoxide. These names
30:56
may sound technical, but they are simply different substances moving
31:00
through a very cold and distant environment. You do not
31:03
need to picture formulas or symbols. Just imagine a thin
31:07
mixture of invisible gases, rising only a little above the surface,
31:12
before becoming almost indistinguishable from the darkness around Pluto. The
31:17
atmosphere is so thin that if you were somehow standing
31:20
there without protection, it would not feel like the air
31:23
around you on Earth. there would be no familiar breeze,
31:27
no soft pressure against your skin, no comfortable atmosphere surrounding you. Instead,
31:33
the world above you would feel almost empty. And yet
31:37
this almost empty sky can still change. Pluto follows its long,
31:42
stretched path around the Sun. As its distance from the
31:45
Sun changes, the amount of sunlight reaching its surface changes
31:49
as well. When Pluto receives more sunlight, more surface ice
31:54
can become gas. When conditions become colder, material can settle
31:59
back toward the surface. So Pluto's atmosphere is not simply
32:04
sitting there permanently. It can grow and thin. It can move.
32:09
It can expand outward into space. And because Pluto is
32:13
a small world, its gravity is not strong enough to
32:16
hold every molecule forever. Some atmospheric particles can gradually escape.
32:23
You can picture them drifting upward, becoming more widely separated,
32:26
until the boundary between Pluto's atmosphere and the surrounding space
32:31
becomes almost impossible to define. There is no sharp wall
32:35
where the atmosphere suddenly ends. Instead, it becomes thinner and thinner,
32:41
a little less and a little less, until there is
32:44
almost nothing left. Far above the surface, sunlight interacts with
32:49
tiny particles in this delicate atmosphere. These particles can form
32:54
layers of haze, and when sunlight passes through those layers,
32:58
the atmosphere can take on a faint blue appearance. It
33:02
is not a bright blue sky like Earth. It is softer,
33:06
more distant, more ghostly. Imagine looking toward the edge of
33:10
Pluto from the surface. The sun is low and weak.
33:15
The horizon is dark, and around the edge of the world,
33:19
a very thin blue line seems to appear. almost as
33:22
though someone had brushed a little colour around the rim
33:25
of the frozen planet. The New Horizons spacecraft was able
33:29
to observe this haze from a different perspective, looking back
33:33
toward Pluto after passing by. The light travelled through the atmosphere,
33:38
touched the tiny particles suspended there, and revealed a delicate
33:42
structure that would have been difficult to notice from the
33:45
surface alone. For a moment, Pluto did not look completely airless.
33:50
it looked wrapped in a very thin veil. And this
33:54
veil connects with another mystery on the surface. The reddish
33:57
colour you saw earlier is not simply ordinary rock. Far
34:02
above the surface, sunlight and radiation can slowly alter simple
34:06
molecules such as methane and carbon dioxide. Over time, more
34:12
complicated organic material can form. Some of this material is
34:16
dark and reddish. Scientists call these materials Tholins. The word
34:22
itself is less important than the slow process behind it.
34:25
Simple molecules, faint sunlight, radiation, time, and eventually, tiny complex
34:33
particles with reddish colours. Some of these particles can remain
34:37
suspended in the atmosphere. Others can slowly settle downward. Over
34:42
immense periods of time, they may gather across the surface.
34:46
and this may help create some of Pluto's darker red
34:50
and brown regions. So the colour of Pluto is connected,
34:54
in part, to what happens above the surface. The frozen
34:58
ground is not completely separate from the atmosphere, the atmosphere
35:02
is not completely separate from space, and space itself is
35:06
not completely separate from the chemistry taking place on the surface.
35:10
Everything is gently connected. Ice rises, gas drifts. Light changes molecules,
35:17
tiny particles form, some eventually fall back down, and the
35:22
surface slowly receives them. You can let that cycle repeat
35:26
in your imagination, upward, outward, then downward again, a little
35:32
material leaving the frozen ground, a little material moving through
35:36
the thin atmosphere, a little material returning to the world below,
35:40
all of it happening beneath a distant sun. all of
35:43
it happening so slowly that Pluto can appear perfectly still.
35:48
But now, as you look across the pale heart-shaped plane,
35:52
you know that the surface is moving, you know that
35:55
material can rise from the ice, you know that the
35:58
atmosphere can change, and you know that even the reddish
36:02
colour of the distant landscape may have begun with an
36:05
invisible process high above your head. Yet there is still
36:09
something deeper, Because if Pluto can release material from its
36:13
frozen surface, and if its atmosphere can change with sunlight,
36:17
then perhaps the most interesting question is not what happens
36:21
above the ground. Perhaps it is what is happening beneath it,
36:25
under the nitrogen ice, under the mountains, under the frozen crust.
36:30
There may be a place where Pluto is not quite
36:33
as cold as it appears, a hidden region that new
36:36
horizons could never see directly. And slowly, The quiet world
36:41
above the ice begins to point downward. For a moment,
36:47
you can remain beside the pale frozen plane. The surface
36:51
of Pluto stretches quietly beneath you. The nitrogen ice moves
36:56
so slowly that it seems still. Above you, the atmosphere
37:00
is almost weightless. The distant sun provides only a faint light.
37:05
Everything about Pluto seems to suggest cold. And yet …
37:10
As New Horizons looked more closely at this distant world,
37:14
another possibility began to emerge. Perhaps Pluto is not entirely
37:19
frozen inside. Perhaps somewhere beneath the surface there is still warmth.
37:25
The first clue comes from the mountains. Not ordinary mountains,
37:30
shaped only by ancient impacts and frozen erosion, but enormous
37:35
structures that may have been built by material rising from below.
37:40
One of the most remarkable is Wright Mons. It rises
37:44
several kilometres above the surrounding landscape and stretches for roughly
37:48
150 kilometres across, according to the supplied source. From a distance,
37:55
it can look almost like a very broad, gentle mountain,
37:59
but its shape invites another possibility. Perhaps it was a volcano,
38:04
not a volcano like the ones you know on Earth.
38:07
there would be no rivers of glowing red rock flowing
38:10
down its slopes, no bright fountains of molten material rising
38:15
into a hot atmosphere. Pluto is far too cold for
38:19
that familiar picture. Instead, if Wright-Mons is volcanic, the material
38:24
moving through it would be much colder. A mixture of
38:28
water ice and other frozen materials may have risen from
38:31
beneath the surface, forming a kind of cold volcanic flow.
38:36
This process is called cryovolcanism. The word simply means volcanic
38:41
activity involving icy or volatile materials, rather than the hot
38:46
molten rock found in Earth's volcanoes. You can imagine it
38:49
very gently. Deep below the frozen surface, something moves. It
38:55
finds a path upward. It slowly reaches the surface, and
39:00
instead of fire, it leaves behind ice. A mountain made
39:04
not by burning heat, but by hidden movement beneath a
39:08
frozen world. The supplied source describes Wright Mons as a
39:13
large icy volcano, and notes that its surface has relatively
39:17
few visible impact craters. That absence of craters is important.
39:23
Just as Sputnik Planitia appears young because its surface has
39:27
been renewed, a relatively smooth volcanic surface structure can suggest
39:31
that something has changed it more recently than the surrounding
39:34
ancient terrain. But here, it is important to remain gentle
39:38
with what we know. We do not know exactly how
39:41
often such activity might occur. We do not know whether
39:45
Wright Mons is erupting today. and we should not imagine
39:48
a schedule of eruptions unfolding beneath Pluto. Instead, the evidence
39:54
suggests something quieter. Pluto has features that may have been
39:58
formed or renewed by internal activity. And that raises a
40:02
deeper question. Where could the energy come from? Pluto is small.
40:07
It is far from the Sun. Its surface is extremely cold.
40:11
And yet the evidence described in the source suggests that
40:14
its interior may still retain heat. That is a strange thought.
40:19
You can imagine touching the frozen surface of Pluto, feeling
40:23
nothing but cold beneath your imagined feet. Then imagine moving downward,
40:28
through the nitrogen-rich surface, through layers of harder ice, deeper
40:34
and deeper. The light from the sun disappears, the surface
40:38
becomes distant. And somewhere below, there may be warmth. Not
40:43
warmth like a summer afternoon, not a glowing furnace. just
40:47
enough internal energy to keep parts of Pluto from becoming
40:51
completely frozen and still. Scientists have considered the possibility that
40:56
liquid water could exist beneath Pluto's frozen outer layers. The
41:01
supplied source describes a possible thick layer of liquid water
41:05
below the surface, based on the evidence and interpretation presented there.
41:10
It is important to call this what it is, a possibility.
41:15
A hidden ocean has not been directly seen. No spacecraft
41:19
has drilled through Pluto's crust. New horizons passed by too
41:23
quickly and too far above the surface to look directly
41:27
into Pluto's interior. Instead, scientists look at the clues on
41:31
the surface. Mountains, plains, the apparent youth of certain regions,
41:38
structures that may have formed through internal activity. Together, These
41:43
clues allow scientists to ask whether Pluto might contain liquid
41:47
water beneath its frozen exterior. And this possibility connects Pluto
41:52
with another family of distant worlds. Some icy moons around
41:57
the giant planets are also thought to contain water beneath
42:00
thick layers of ice. Europa, orbiting Jupiter, is one familiar example.
42:07
Other icy worlds may have similar hidden environments, but Pluto
42:11
is different. those moons can experience strong gravitational interactions with
42:16
their giant planets, which can provide a source of internal heating.
42:20
Pluto does not have a giant planet nearby in the
42:23
same way, so one of the quiet mysteries remains. If
42:27
Pluto really does retain significant internal warmth, where did that
42:32
warmth come from? The supplied source does not provide a
42:35
definitive answer. Perhaps some of Pluto's original heat from the
42:39
early solar system has survived. Perhaps radioactive materials deep inside
42:44
the world have released energy slowly over immense periods of time.
42:49
Perhaps other processes are involved. For now, the answer remains uncertain.
42:55
And there is something strangely peaceful about that uncertainty. You
42:59
do not need to solve it. You can simply let
43:02
the question remain beneath the ice. Because Pluto has been
43:06
carrying that question for billions of years. While its surface
43:10
travels around the sun, while nitrogen glaciers slowly move across
43:14
Sputnik Planitia, while thin gases rise into the darkness, the
43:19
interior may continue its quiet work far below. A frozen surface,
43:24
a hidden warmth, perhaps even a layer of dark liquid water,
43:29
and above all of it, the almost complete silence of space.
43:33
You can imagine standing once more on the surface, looking
43:37
across right mons. The mountain is cold, the plain is cold,
43:42
the sky is cold. Everything around you appears frozen, yet
43:47
somewhere beneath your feet something may still be moving, something
43:50
may still be releasing heat, something may still be changing
43:54
Pluto from within. And perhaps the strangest part is that
43:58
this hidden activity may not belong entirely to Pluto alone,
44:02
because very close beside Pluto, moving with it through the darkness,
44:07
is another world. Charon, and the relationship between these two
44:12
worlds may reach much deeper than simply sharing the same orbit.
44:18
For a little while you can remain beneath the quiet
44:22
sky of Pluto. The mountains are behind you. The pale
44:26
plain stretches toward the horizon. Somewhere beneath the frozen ground
44:31
there may be warmth. Perhaps there is even water hidden
44:35
beneath layers of ice. And above everything The faint atmosphere
44:39
drifts almost imperceptibly into space. But Pluto has never been
44:44
completely alone. Just beyond the horizon, moving with it through
44:48
the darkness, is Charon. The two worlds remain close. They
44:53
turn together, they show each other the same faces, and
44:57
they move around an invisible point between them, as though
45:01
their shared gravity has given them a single, slow rhythm.
45:05
The arrangement is unusual enough. that scientists have wondered whether
45:09
Pluto and Charon may have a common history. One possibility
45:13
is that the two worlds were shaped by a very
45:16
ancient collision. This idea is not something New Horizons directly witnessed.
45:23
The spacecraft arrived billions of years too late for that. Instead,
45:28
scientists examine the present arrangement of Pluto and Charon and
45:33
ask what kind of history could have produced it. You
45:36
can imagine the young solar system as a much more
45:39
crowded place than the quiet darkness you see now. Worlds
45:43
were forming. Small bodies were moving through the outer regions.
45:48
Gravity was constantly rearranging their paths. Objects could approach one another,
45:54
pass by, or sometimes collide. And somewhere in that ancient darkness,
46:00
Pluto and Charon may have encountered one another. Perhaps the
46:04
meeting was violent by human standards. But on the scale
46:08
of worlds, the result may have been more complicated than
46:11
simple destruction. Instead of one body disappearing and another remaining,
46:17
the two may have become gravitationally bound. Pluto remained. Charon remained.
46:23
And together, they continued through the solar system. The supplied
46:27
source presents this collision as a possible origin for their
46:31
unusual configuration. and suggests that the encounter may also have
46:35
influenced Pluto's later internal activity. It is important to leave
46:41
the word possible in place. You do not need to
46:45
turn the idea into certainty. There is something more beautiful
46:49
in allowing the ancient history to remain partly hidden. After all,
46:54
Pluto and Charon have been carrying their secrets for billions
46:58
of years. You can imagine the two young worlds after
47:01
their encounter. Perhaps Pluto was left with a changed interior.
47:06
Perhaps Charon settled into a close orbit, and over an
47:10
immense amount of time, gravity slowly did the rest. It
47:14
brought their rotations into harmony. It kept them close. It
47:18
created the shared movement we see today. Now, imagine standing
47:24
on Pluto again. Look upward. Charon is there. Not rising.
47:29
Not setting. Just present. A large companion hanging in one
47:34
place in the sky. Its surface is different from Pluto's.
47:39
It is brighter in some regions, darker in others, and
47:42
marked by long valleys and broad landscapes of its own.
47:46
But there is one detail that seems especially interesting. Charon
47:51
has a reddish region near one of its poles, a darker,
47:55
rusty-looking area, and the colour invites another quiet question. Where
48:00
did it come from? One possibility discussed in the supplied
48:03
material is that some of the reddish material on Charon
48:07
may have originated on Pluto. You can imagine tiny particles
48:12
leaving Pluto, not great clouds, not enormous explosions, just small
48:18
pieces of material escaping from the surface and entering the
48:21
space between the two worlds. Some material produced through radiation-driven
48:27
chemistry may become dark and reddish. These materials are called tholins,
48:32
can accumulate on surfaces over long periods of time. If
48:37
some particles were able to escape Pluto's relatively weak gravity,
48:41
they could travel outward. And because Charon is nearby, some
48:45
of that material might eventually reach its surface. You can
48:49
picture it almost like an extremely slow snowfall across space.
48:54
No flakes, no wind, no sound. Only tiny particles moving
48:59
through darkness. some drifting away, some remaining near Pluto, and
49:05
some perhaps settling onto Charon. Over enormous periods of time,
49:09
a very small amount of material could gradually become visible,
49:13
a faint reddish coating, a subtle colour near the pole,
49:18
a trace of one world appearing on a It is
49:21
an intriguing possibility, but again, it remains an interpretation rather
49:26
than a directly observed journey of individual particles from Pluto
49:30
to Charon. New horizons could photograph the surfaces. It could
49:35
measure their properties. It could observe the colours and structures.
49:40
but it could not watch one tiny particle leave Pluto
49:43
and land on Charon. So the connection remains something scientists
49:47
investigate through evidence. And perhaps that uncertainty makes the two
49:51
worlds even more interesting. Because when you look at Pluto
49:55
and Charon together, you are not simply looking at a
49:58
planet and its moon. You may be looking at two
50:01
worlds whose histories are intertwined. One world may have influenced
50:05
the other. Material may have crossed the space between them.
50:09
Their gravity has shaped their motion, and perhaps an ancient
50:13
encounter changed the interiors of both. They are separated by
50:18
thousands of kilometres. Yet, in a cosmic sense, they are
50:22
remarkably close. And the closer you look, the harder it
50:26
becomes to think of either world entirely by itself. Pluto's
50:31
heart-shaped region may have a connection to its ancient history.
50:36
Charon's position may reflect the same history. Their shared motion
50:40
may be a long-lasting memory of an encounter that happened
50:43
before Earth had taken its modern form. Everything you see
50:47
now is the quiet remainder of something enormously old. The mountains,
50:53
the plains, the ice, the atmosphere, the reddish material, the
50:59
slow turning of Pluto and Charon around their shared point.
51:03
All of it continues, and perhaps that is what makes
51:06
distant worlds so peaceful to imagine. They do not need
51:10
you to understand everything. They simply continue. For billions of years,
51:15
Pluto has followed its long path around the Sun. For
51:19
billions of years, Charon has followed alongside it. And now,
51:24
after new horizons pass through their system, these two worlds
51:28
are no longer completely unknown to you. You have seen
51:31
their surfaces. You have imagined their atmosphere. You have wandered
51:36
across their frozen planes. You have looked beneath the ice,
51:40
and now you can look between them. There is nothing
51:43
there but darkness. Yet that darkness is not empty of meaning.
51:48
It is the space where two worlds balance. The space
51:51
through which tiny particles may drift. The space that has
51:55
held their shared history for billions of years. And as
51:59
you remain there quietly, another thought begins to appear. New
52:04
Horizons did not stop at Pluto. After passing this distant
52:08
pair of worlds, the spacecraft continued onward. Beyond Pluto was
52:12
another region, a region filled with small, ancient objects, faint worlds,
52:18
and countless pieces of the solar system that we had
52:20
barely begun to see, and so the darkness ahead was
52:24
still waiting. And so, after everything you have seen on Pluto,
52:31
you can slowly allow the little world to become smaller again.
52:36
The pale heart begins to recede. The mountains become softer
52:40
against the horizon. Charon becomes a smaller companion beside Pluto.
52:46
And New Horizons continues onward. The spacecraft does not remain there.
52:51
It does not settle into orbit. It does not wait
52:54
beside Pluto for another season or another year. After its
52:59
brief encounter with the Pluto system in July of 2015…
53:03
New horizons continued deeper into the Kuiper Belt, carrying with
53:08
it the observations of a world that had remained almost
53:11
entirely unknown until that moment. You can imagine Pluto slowly
53:16
disappearing behind you. Not suddenly. There is no final curtain.
53:21
There is simply distance. A little more distance, then more,
53:26
and more, until the world that once seemed enormous becomes
53:29
another small point of light. Ahead lies the Kuiper Belt.
53:34
This is the region beyond Neptune, a broad, distant zone
53:39
containing many icy bodies left over from the formation of
53:43
the solar system. NASA describes it as a large region
53:47
of icy objects extending far beyond Neptune's orbit, with potentially
53:53
millions of other small worlds remaining there. So Pluto was
53:58
never truly alone. It belongs to a much larger family,
54:02
And perhaps this changes the way you think about it.
54:05
Pluto was once imagined as the final planet, the little
54:09
world sitting at the edge of everything. But now you
54:12
know that the edge is not really an edge. Beyond Pluto,
54:17
there are more worlds, more pieces of ancient material, more
54:22
objects moving quietly through the darkness. And most of them
54:26
have never been visited by a spacecraft. Only one spacecraft
54:30
has explored the Kuiper Belt up close. New Horizons. And
54:35
even after Pluto, its journey continued. In 2019, the spacecraft
54:42
reached another Kuiper Belt object. Its name is Arrokoth. It
54:47
was the most distant object ever explored up close at
54:50
the time of the encounter, roughly a billion miles beyond Pluto.
54:55
Arrokoth was very different from Pluto. It was much smaller.
55:00
It did not have a vast atmosphere like Pluto's. It
55:04
did not have a great heart-shaped plane. But it offered
55:07
something else. A glimpse of an ancient object that had
55:11
remained far from the warmer inner solar system for almost
55:14
all of its history. You can imagine approaching it slowly.
55:19
At first, Arrokoth would have been nothing more than a
55:22
tiny point. Then a shape. Then two connected lobes. a
55:27
strange reddish-brown world floating quietly in the darkness. And suddenly,
55:33
the distant Kuiper Belt was no longer just a concept.
55:37
It was a place, a place containing actual landscapes, actual surfaces,
55:43
actual ancient worlds. The same is true of Pluto. Before
55:48
New Horizons arrived, Pluto was mostly an idea in your mind.
55:53
A name, a small point of light, a distant object
55:57
measured through telescopes. But when the spacecraft passed by, that
56:02
point became a landscape. And perhaps this is one of
56:05
the most beautiful things about exploration. Sometimes the greatest discovery
56:11
is not finding something completely unexpected. Sometimes it is discovering
56:16
that something you thought you understood is far more complicated
56:20
than you imagined. Pluto became larger in our minds because
56:25
it became smaller in our images. We could finally see
56:29
its surface. We could see its mountains, its glaciers, its atmosphere,
56:35
its colours, its possible cryovolcanoes, its relationship with Charon, and
56:41
perhaps the hidden water beneath the ice. All of those
56:44
discoveries came from a brief encounter, a spacecraft moving quickly
56:49
through the system, a few precious hours of close observation. Then,
56:54
Once again, distance. New Horizons continued outward, and even today,
57:00
the spacecraft remains active in the far reaches of the
57:04
solar system. NASA has continued extending the mission, using New
57:09
Horizons to study the distant space environment and the Kuiper
57:13
Belt while searching for opportunities for further close encounters. NASA's
57:18
current mission information says the spacecraft is expected to remain
57:23
within the Kuiper Belt into roughly 2028 or 2029. So
57:30
the story did not truly end at Pluto. The spacecraft
57:34
simply kept going, farther from Earth, farther from the Sun,
57:39
farther from the familiar worlds. The Sun itself becomes increasingly faint.
57:45
From New Horizons' distant position, our star is no longer
57:48
the enormous glowing presence you imagine from Earth. It is
57:52
simply the star at the centre of the solar system,
57:56
still providing a little light, still holding the distant worlds
57:59
in its gravitational influence. And around New Horizons there is
58:04
almost nothing. No air, no wind, no sound. Only the
58:09
faint particles of space, distant sunlight, and the slow movement
58:14
of a machine, carrying traces of human curiosity outward. You
58:19
can imagine the spacecraft continuing through that darkness now. Behind it,
58:24
Pluto is becoming smaller. Farther behind, Neptune. Farther still, the
58:30
familiar planets. Earth has already become unimaginably distant. Yet somewhere
58:37
on that small blue world, people are still looking outward,
58:41
still wondering, still asking what lies beyond the next horizon.
58:46
And perhaps Pluto has left you with a quieter answer
58:48
than you expected. A world does not have to be
58:51
large to be complicated. It does not have to be
58:55
warm to be active. It does not have to be
58:57
close to the sun to contain movement. And it does
59:01
not have to keep the name planet to remain extraordinary.
59:05
Pluto is a small frozen world, but beneath its pale
59:08
surface ice can move. Above it, an atmosphere can rise
59:13
and fade. Across it, colours can form slowly through chemistry
59:17
and sunlight. Within it, there may be warmth, perhaps water,
59:22
perhaps ancient geological activity. And beside it, Charon continues its
59:27
patient turning. sharing the same invisible gravitational rhythm. Beyond Pluto,
59:34
countless other worlds wait in the Kuiper belt. Most have
59:38
never been seen closely, some may be smaller, some may
59:42
be darker, some may have histories even stranger than Pluto's.
59:47
And perhaps, far in the future, another spacecraft will travel
59:51
through this darkness and turn another tiny point of light
59:55
into a landscape. For now, You can simply let new
59:59
horizons continue. You do not need to follow it. You
1:00:03
do not need to know where every distant world is.
1:00:07
You can let the spacecraft become smaller and smaller, drifting
1:00:10
outward through the quiet frontier, and behind it, Pluto remains there,
1:00:16
still turning, still following its long path around the Sun,
1:00:20
still carrying its frozen heart, its moving ice, its thin atmosphere,
1:00:26
and its hidden questions. The little world that once seemed
1:00:29
to be the end of the solar system was never
1:00:32
really the end. It was simply one quiet doorway into
1:00:35
a much larger darkness. And beyond that doorway, the Kuiper
1:00:40
Belt continues. Cold, ancient, mostly unseen, and very, very quiet.
1:00:50
And so, our journey through Pluto can slowly come to rest.
1:00:54
You have travelled across a frozen heart, beneath a faint
1:00:58
blue haze, and through landscapes where nitrogen ice moves almost
1:01:02
too slowly to notice. You have watched Pluto and Charon
1:01:07
turning together in the darkness, two distant worlds sharing an
1:01:11
invisible rhythm, perhaps carrying the quiet traces of an ancient encounter.
1:01:16
You have drifted above mountains that may have been shaped
1:01:19
by icy volcanic activity, and imagined what might exist beneath
1:01:23
the frozen crust. perhaps a hidden layer of water, perhaps
1:01:28
only warmth slowly fading through the deep interior. And now,
1:01:33
you can let all of those images become softer. There
1:01:36
is nothing more you need to understand tonight. You do
1:01:39
not need to remember the names of the mountains, the glaciers,
1:01:43
the plains, or the distant spacecraft. You can simply let
1:01:47
Pluto become a small, pale world somewhere far away. New
1:01:52
Horizons has continued onward, deeper into the quiet frontier beyond Neptune,
1:01:58
while Pluto remains on its enormous journey around the Sun.
1:02:03
248 years for one slow revolution. So much time for
1:02:07
a world that seems so small. And perhaps somewhere in
1:02:11
that darkness, the thin atmosphere is still drifting, nitrogen ice
1:02:16
is still moving across the frozen plain, and tiny particles
1:02:20
are still settling quietly onto the surface. Everything continues. slowly,
1:02:26
almost imperceptibly. You are safe here, there is nothing to do,
1:02:31
just listen, breathe gently, and allow the distance to grow.
1:02:36
The sun is becoming smaller behind you now, Pluto is
1:02:40
becoming smaller too, its heart-shaped plane fades into darkness. Charon
1:02:46
becomes only a faint companion, and eventually both worlds become
1:02:51
little points of light among countless others. Yet they are
1:02:54
still there, still turning, still moving, still carrying their ancient
1:03:00
stories through the cold. And as you drift farther away,
1:03:04
perhaps you can imagine new horizons continuing ahead, silently crossing
1:03:09
the Kuiper Belt, toward worlds that we have not yet
1:03:12
seen closely, toward distant places that may remain unknown for
1:03:17
many years. The darkness ahead does not need to be filled.
1:03:21
It can simply remain dark, quiet. open, endless. And somewhere
1:03:27
far behind you, Pluto continues its slow orbit, holding its
1:03:32
frozen secrets beneath the faint light of the sun. You
1:03:35
can let yourself drift now. The stars will remain, the
1:03:40
planets will continue turning, Pluto will keep moving through the
1:03:44
distant darkness, and while you sleep, the universe will carry
1:03:48
on quietly around you.