Liquid nitrogen may have recently flowed across Pluto's heart-shaped glacier

A new study has revealed that liquid nitrogen may be flowing across Pluto's heart-shaped glacier, Sputnik Planitia. This marks the first evidence of liquid flow occurring recently on the dwarf planet. The research, led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and based on data from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, suggests that liquid nitrogen is reaching the surface through cracks at the northern edge of the glacier.

The study's lead author, Dr. Alan Stern, described Pluto as "never stopping surprising us" with this discovery. Sputnik Planitia, a vast frozen nitrogen glacier larger than Texas and Oklahoma combined, has previously shown city-sized geologic convection cells and thin, dark linear features, with more diffuse dark features. These dark patterns on the northern portion of Sputnik Planitia appear to be occasionally wetted by a liquid, which is most likely liquid nitrogen.

While Pluto's atmospheric and thermal conditions make liquid nitrogen rain physically impossible, the surface patterns on northern Sputnik Planitia resemble glacial features on Earth that have been wetted by rainwater or subsurface liquids. The surface of Sputnik Planitia is quite young, likely less than 1 million years old. The findings provide new insights into how materials behave in extreme environments and could potentially explain other events seen across the solar system, such as the geysers observed on Neptune's moon Triton by NASA's Voyager 2.