The Pluto-Earth connect

Almost a decade after it grabbed headlines upon being de-recognised as a planet, Pluto is back in the news. For the first time in human history, we now have actual photographs, taken by a spaceship called New Horizons, of what was once the last planet in our solar system and is currently only a dwarf-planet. In other words, what we are seeing now has never been seen before by mankind. The gravity of this development takes a while to sink in, given that we live in the age of instant communication and gratification, where information and even experiences are just a just click away, and it's easy to be lulled into a sense of been there-done that.

But just when one thinks that the human race has explored and discovered nearly all that this universe has to offer, that there really isn't anything new out there anymore, a space mission like New Horizons reminds us of all that which lies beyond our realm of knowledge. That it took nine-and-a-half-years for the spaceship to travel from Earth to Pluto, and the hundreds of photographs, that New Horizons has taken over just a span of few minutes, will take about 16 months to be transmitted back to scientists here, speaks volumes. It is only after all the photographs have been received and analysed, will scientists have a fuller idea about Pluto. But there are a few things that we have learned from the initial lot of visuals. First, the supposedly icy-cold Pluto is neither blue nor grey, as commonly depicted in school textbooks.

Instead, it is reddish brown, somewhat like Mars. Second, it seems like Pluto's surface has a light coloured region in the shape of a heart (which was surely broken when scientists from Earth banished it from solar system). In fact, it was just a few months before the International Astronomer's Union declared in August 2006 that Pluto was not weighty enough to be a planet that the New Horizons probe was launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Scientists have nicknamed this heart-shaped area on Pluto as Tombaugh Regio, after Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered the body in 1930. Third, it seems like there have been active geological processes on Pluto's surface fairly recently — within the last 100 million years. Fourth, we now have Pluto's exact measurement — it is 2,370 kms in diameter. This is bigger than what had been previously estimated and indicates that Pluto is the largest object in the vast region beyond Neptune's orbit. 

Those wondering why learning about a planetary object that is light years away from Earth is important, factor this: Pluto was formed around the same time as Earth and the rest of this solar system came into being, and it’s built of much the same materials as our planet. Hence, learning about nature and processes of Pluto can help humans better understand the evolution of Earth. Besides, it is a fallacy to think that the outer space is another world when, in fact, the Earth is part of the same system as Pluto — it is the same universe.