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    Mountains of Pluto tagged posts

    The Mountains of Pluto are Snowcapped, but not for the same reasons as on Earth

    October 14, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space, Chemistry/Nanotechnology

    At left, the “Cthulhu” region near Pluto’s equator, at right the Alps on Earth. Two identical landscapes created by highly different processes.
    © NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
    © Thomas Pesquet/ESA

    In 2015, the New Horizons space probe discovered spectacular snowcapped mountains on Pluto, which are strikingly similar to mountains on Earth. Such a landscape had never before been observed elsewhere in the Solar System. However, as atmospheric temperatures on our planet decrease at altitude, on Pluto they heat up at altitude as a result of solar radiation.

    So where does this ice come from? An international team led by CNRS scientists* conducted this exploration...

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