{"id":41424,"date":"2025-08-03T23:02:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-03T23:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/41424\/"},"modified":"2025-08-03T23:02:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T23:02:09","slug":"skyscraper-size-spikes-of-methane-ice-may-surround-plutos-equator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/41424\/","title":{"rendered":"Skyscraper-size spikes of methane ice may surround Pluto’s equator"},"content":{"rendered":"

Skyscraper-size spires of mehtane ice may cover around 60% of Pluto<\/a>‘s equatorial region \u2014 a larger area than scientists previously estimated, new research finds.<\/p>\n

The study, published July 5 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets<\/a>, was based on data collected by NASA<\/a>‘s New Horizons spacecraft, which captured the first close-up images of the tiny world a decade ago, on July 14, 2015.<\/p>\n

During that flyby, the spacecraft spotted spires of methane ice, each about 1,000 feet (300 meters) tall \u2014 about as tall as the Eiffel Tower. They’re separated by up to 4.4 miles (7 kilometers) in somewhat parallel rows to form a geological feature astronomers call “bladed terrain.”<\/p>\n

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The spires were spotted in high-altitude regions along the dwarf planet’s equator in the Tartarus Dorsa region, a mountainous stretch just east of Pluto’s famous heart-shaped Tombaugh Regio<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The features appear to be a larger but more spaced-out version of Earth’s penitentes \u2014 structures of water ice that form in high altitude regions, such as the Andes, and reach a maximum of 9 feet (3 m). Similar structures have also been seen on Jupiter’s moon Europa<\/a> and may exist on Mars.<\/p>\n

Related: Pluto may have an ice-spewing ‘supervolcano’ the size of Yellowstone, New Horizons data reveals<\/a><\/p>\n

New Horizons was only able to snap high-resolution images of the bladed terrain on the side of Pluto that faced the probe \u2014 the encounter hemisphere \u2014 during its flyby. But additional data collected at infrared frequencies hinted that most of the dwarf planet’s equatorial region, even on the non-encounter hemisphere, was methane-rich. This suggested that the spires are there, too.<\/p>\n

Get the world\u2019s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n

\"Pluto's<\/p>\n

New Horizons was only able to take high-resolution photos of the side of Pluto facing the probe, known as the “encounter hemisphere.” (Image credit: JPL\/NASA\/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory\/Southwest Research Institute)<\/p>\n

However, photos of Pluto’s non-encounter hemisphere are too fuzzy to directly spot spires. One way to detect them, though, is to use “indirect clues in the images,” Ishan Mishra<\/a>, a postdoctoral fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and the new study’s first author, told Live Science in an email.<\/p>\n

These indirect clues, Mishra said, include surface roughness \u2014 irregularities, including slopes or ridges such as Pluto’s spires \u2014 that were detected on scales too small for spacecraft cameras to resolve. He noted that rougher surfaces appear darker than smoother ones under the same lighting conditions because irregularities create shadows. That means rough, blade-covered surfaces would produce a detectable “darkening” trend, even if it were impossible to identify the icy spikes directly.<\/p>\n

Following this reasoning, the study’s authors analyzed photos of Pluto in which light had been reflected from the surface at many different angles. Using this reflectance data, the researchers studied how Pluto’s surface brightness varied depending on the viewing angle. They focused on six specific regions, including the bladed terrain that the spacecraft had spotted on the encounter hemisphere and the hypothesized bladed terrain on the dwarf planet’s other side. Using a mathematical model, the team then calculated how the surface brightness varied with roughness.<\/p>\n

\"Tall<\/p>\n

Bladed terrain is believed to be similar to penitentes on Earth, which form in high-altitude regions, such as the Andes. (Image credit: Photograph by Michael Schwab\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The astronomers found that, despite great variation in each region, the dark side’s methane-rich regions were very rough \u2014 on average, twice as rough as the bladed terrain in the encounter hemisphere.<\/p>\n

The results imply that bladed terrain of ice spires exists in a band spanning about 60% of the planet’s circumference \u2014 equivalent to five times the width of the continental United States \u2014 with a majority located on the non-encounter hemisphere. But it isn’t clear if the band is continuous or patchy, Mishra told Live Science.<\/p>\n

The band extends between 30 degrees north and south of Pluto’s equator, where the climatic conditions seem just right for the spikes to form, Mishra explained. “The formation of bladed terrain depends on long-term cycles of methane condensation and sublimation, which are governed by Pluto’s seasons and orbital variations,” he said.<\/p>\n

Direct evidence will be needed to confirm the new observations. The most definitive way to confirm the bladed terrain’s extension into Pluto’s dark side is a future spacecraft mission, Mishra said. “Until then, studies like ours offer the best indirect evidence using the available data.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Skyscraper-size spires of mehtane ice may cover around 60% of Pluto‘s equatorial region \u2014 a larger area than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":["post-41424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}