Youthful Frozen Plains Cover Pluto’s Big ‘Heart’ – Spectacular New Images from New Horizons

universetoady.com ^ | on July 17, 2015 | Ken Kremer

[JimSEA]

It screams “active geology”. My questions include how and why there is an active hot core.

[Eddie01]

[smoothsailing]

Close in photos have to be photoshopped first to cover up Disney copyrighted features.

Too late...

[Not now, Not ever!]

1,000 BPS, and it's the longest in distance, radio transmission the human race has ever accomplished.

[BenLurkin]

Isn’t it the “tidal” action of orbiting together with CHaron?

[henkster]

I thought we were still getting data from the Voyager probes, that are almost 20 billion Km away.

[Boogieman]

Yeah, they tend to be more irregular, but not always, for example here is a dry lake bed that is almost hexagonal:

So I think the conditions affect the geometry. If I had to guess, the quicker they dry out, the more irregular they will probably be. Just a hunch.

[Boogieman]

Notice also, the “hills” only seem to form inside the “troughs”, and never on top of the segments.

It looks like something is seeping up through those fissures and piling up on the surface to form the hills.

[terycarl]

it's the longest in distance, radio transmission the human race has ever accomplished.

That we know of...we are getting the signal from afar but we have transmitted radio signals into space for years and have no concept of how far they my have traveled...

[JimSEA]

Having a moon that’s almost as big as you are keeps both cores hot???

[BenLurkin]

I don’t know.

[JimSEA]

Still, Europa doesn’t have the ice mountain range building as does Pluto even though it does have indications of plate tectonics?

[Lazamataz]

If that’s Pluto, that’s a thriving city.

[onedoug]

Also note, no impact craters in the above image, which would indicate the area is relatively young.

[JimSEA]

Very active plate movement/collisions?

[onedoug]

Seems the hills lift up around the “plated” regions, whereas if compressional, one should expect them across those surfaces as well. No evident subduction. Perhaps some sort of surface “stretching” in which plutonic material may fill in the gaps.

Very strange indeed.

[JimSEA]

We’re likely to have fun with this for quite a while.

[JoeProBono]

[Gideon7]

(Source: xkcd)

[Woodman]

What about Voyager? I believe that would bold the long distance record. They are both still sending back data.