Start speaking a new language in 3 weeks with Babbel 🎉 ➡️ bit.ly/3r5qd6R
When NASA's New Horizons spacecraft finally reached Pluto and sent back the first images of the far-flung world, we saw something that absolutely blew our minds. For decades, Pluto had been a planet of paradoxes. Once considered the ninth planet in our solar system, it had been reclassified, debated, and wondered about. The object had remained a blurry dot even in our most powerful telescopes. But now, after more than 80 years of its discovery, we had the first close-up pictures of Pluto. The spacecraft showed us a Pluto filled with geological features that indicated not just a history of activity but the possibility of ongoing dynamism. Towering Mountains, deep valleys, and vast plains suggested a world in the process of changing, not a fossilized relic from the past.
But the most surprising discovery was the strong evidence of a subsurface ocean concealed beneath layers of ice. This finding didn't just make us reconsider Pluto; it threw open new doors of possibility for the existence of life beyond Earth. If a so-called 'dead' planet, at the far reaches of our solar system, could harbor an ocean, what else might we find as we venture deeper into the cosmos?