Far away, beyond the planet Neptune, is a world with extremely cold temperatures. On this dwarf planet, Pluto, water is frozen solid like rock. For a long time, people thought Pluto was a quiet, frozen place. But a new discovery shows that this distant planet has big ice mountains that can suddenly fall down.
Researchers have found six large landslides on Pluto. This is the first time scientists have seen these geological events on the dwarf planet. The study, published in the journal Icarus, shows that gravity is changing Pluto's rough surface.
The evidence was found in photos taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft in 2015. Geologist Marco Emanuele Discenza and physicist Maria Teresa Brunetti looked closely at these images. They used a special camera tool and saw clear signs of falling ice and rock.
These were not small landslides. The falling material came from high cliffs, between 1.5 and 2.2 kilometers tall. The debris slid across the ground for many kilometers. The largest area of fallen material covered 130 square kilometers.
Scientists noticed that the debris on Pluto moved much farther across the ground than expected. They think Pluto's weak gravity and the very slippery ice allowed it to slide for long distances.
These events happened near Sputnik Planitia, a large flat area on Pluto known as its "heart." The team found landslides in different craters. They looked for steep cliffs, broken ice pieces, and rough ground.
One landslide was likely caused by a smaller object hitting the crater's edge. For the others, scientists think Pluto's changing orbit causes temperature shifts. This makes materials freeze and unfreeze, weakening the icy cliffs until they collapse.
Landslides happen on many planets and moons. Finding them on Pluto shows that even very cold worlds are always changing. More landslides might be hidden on Pluto, waiting to be discovered.