Bowler Hat Science

Matthew R Francis, Science Writer

The ice must flow to make Pluto’s dunes, but how?

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The Wrinkles On Pluto’s Heart Could Be Methane-Ice Dunes

In this high-resolution image of Pluto’s heart, you can see wrinkles in the nitrogen ice. Those are possibly dunes made of methane, which raises an interesting question: how can such dunes form? [Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute]

For Forbes:

Sand dunes are found all over Earth: along the shores of lakes or oceans, deserts like the Sahara in Africa, and even underwater. Robotic space probes have also found dunes on Venus, Mars, and Saturn’s giant moon Titan.

Now researchers think they have found dunes on Pluto, which presents a huge (and fun) mystery. How can dunes form on a world where the atmosphere is a bare wisp, not enough to create the kind of winds responsible for making dunes elsewhere in the Solar System?

[Read the rest at Forbes…]

Matthew R. Francis

dunes, planetary atmospheres, Pluto

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