Relatively recent ice volcano activity on Pluto raises the possibility of liquid water beneath the freezing planet's surface.
is a dwarf planet that exists in the Kuiper Belt, a circle of icy objects that orbit the sun past the orbit of Neptune. It is a tiny, rocky, distant world, just one sixth the width of Earth—about half the width of the United States—and 39 times as far away from the sun as we are.
Since it's so far away from the sun, Pluto is an extremely cold, inhospitable place. It has an average surface temperature of about -387 degrees Fahrenheit and a thin atmosphere that is mostly made of nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide. In other words, Pluto is too cold to sustain life.that the planet's interior may actually contain a water-rich ocean that could lie over 100 miles beneath the surface.
What's more, since the area has a lack of impact craters the observed volcanic activity on Pluto is thought to be relatively young—relatively being the key word here, since even the youngest areas areStill, this suggests that even today the planet could retain a source of heat, possibly due to the radioactive decay of material.
The possibility of a relatively warm, liquid water ocean beneath Pluto raises the question of whether some sort of life could exist there. Kelsi Singer, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and the lead author of a study detailing the Pluto volcano research, told
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