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How Pluto got its 'heart'

The mystery of how Pluto got a giant heart-shaped feature on its surface has finally been solved by an international team of astrophysicists. According to simulations, a collision between Pluto and a planetary body that happened relatively slowly and at an oblique angle left the impactor "splatted" onto Pluto's surface. The findings also cast doubt on the existence of a subsurface ocean on Pluto, as was previously speculated.

Ever since the cameras of NASA's New Horizons mission discovered a large heart-shaped structure on the surface of the dwarf planet Pluto in 2015, this "heart" has puzzled scientists because of its unique shape, geological composition and elevation. According to their research, Pluto's early history was marked by a cataclysmic event that formed Sputnik Planitia: a collision with a planetary body a little over 400 miles in diameter, roughly the size of Arizona from north to south. The elongated shape of Sputnik Planitia and its location at the equator strongly suggest that the impact was not a direct head-on collision but rather an oblique one, according to Martin Jutzi of the University of Bern, who initiated the study.

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