Evidence supports 'hot start' scenario and early ocean formation on Pluto

Santa Cruz CA (SPX) Jun 23, 2020

The accretion of new material during Pluto's formation may have generated enough heat to create a liquid ocean that has persisted beneath an icy crust to the present day, despite the dwarf planet's orbit far from the sun in the cold outer reaches of the solar system. This "hot start" scenario, presented in a paper published June 22 in Nature Geoscience, contrasts with the traditional view