Sentences with phrase «flowing nitrogen ice»

PLUTO»S heart looks surprisingly fresh, and flowing nitrogen ice may be acting as its fountain of youth.

Once on that lowland, the bergs are carried along by the slow - flowing nitrogen ice, often ending up clumped together in large groups (such as the 60 - km - long Challenger Colles, upper right, a feature whose name honors the seven astronauts who died onboard space shuttle Challenger in 1986).

Not exact matches

Both water and nitrogen are solids at Pluto's temperatures, but the nitrogen ice is structurally weak and has a low viscosity that allows it to deform and flow like a fluid, while the water ice has a very high viscosity and can form tall, hard mountains, Trowbridge said.

The team computed the Rayleigh number for the nitrogen ice layer, a mathematical term associated with the level of buoyancy - driven flow, or convection, and found it to be more than 10,000 times greater than the critical value needed for the onset of convection.

Qiang Wei at Peking University in China and his colleagues calculated that nitrogen ice, which is softer than water ice, on Pluto's plains may flow like molasses to fill in craters as they form.

Using computer models, New Horizons team members have been able to determine the depth of the layer of solid nitrogen ice within Pluto's distinctive «heart» feature — a large plain informally known as Sputnik Planum — and how fast that ice is flowing.

The new images are intriguing NASA astronomers with views of flows of nitrogen ice spreading from mountains onto flat plains, possible dune regions, and networks of valleys carved into Pluto's surface by as yet unknown materials.

The recent flyby of Pluto by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft revealed the distant planet to be a surprisingly active world, replete with geologically recent flows of nitrogen ice that may be r...