Researchers suggest Pluto might be a giant comet, if not planet

Since Pluto is not considered a planet anymore, there has always been a debate as to what it is then. Researchers have now suggested that it just might be a huge comet, made from billions of comets itself.

Scientists from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) joined data from NASA’s New Horizons flyby of Pluto and the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission that landed on comet 67P to come up with the theory suggesting Pluto to be a an overgrown comet and that it is formed from billions of comets.

According to CNET, Dr. Christopher Glein from SwRI said, “We have developed what we call ‘the giant comet’ cosmochemical model of Pluto formation.”

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Researchers discovered that Pluto contained a huge, nitrogen-rich ice glacier on its surface called Sputnik Planitia, which was akin in composition to what was found by Rosetta on its comet. “We found an intriguing consistency between the estimated amount of nitrogen inside the glacier and the amount that would be expected if Pluto was formed by the agglomeration of roughly a billion comets or other Kuiper Belt objects similar in chemical composition to 67P, the comet explored by Rosetta,” Glein explains.

Published in the journal Icarus, Glein said, “Our research suggests that Pluto’s initial chemical makeup, inherited from cometary building blocks, was chemically modified by liquid water, perhaps even in a subsurface ocean.”

However, researchers said that this theory might not be totally accurate. They also suggested another theory of Pluto’s formation that might be because of extremely cold ices with chemical composition similar to that of the sun, reported Science Alert.

“This research builds upon the fantastic successes of the New Horizons and Rosetta missions to expand our understanding of the origin and evolution of Pluto. Using chemistry as a detective’s tool, we are able to trace certain features we see on Pluto today to formation processes from long ago. This leads to a new appreciation of the richness of Pluto’s ‘life story,’ which we are only starting to grasp," explained Glein.