Audio long-read: Pluto’s dark side is overflowing with secrets

Audio long-read: Pluto’s dark side is overflowing with secrets

Audio long-read: secrets of Pluto’s dark side

You’ve seen the stunning close-ups taken by New Horizons of Pluto’s ‘near side’— the hemisphere that the Sun was illuminating at the time the NASA spacecraft zipped past the planet in 2015. Now astronomers are beginning to analyse the dwarf planet’s ‘dark side’, which New Horizons had photographed days before. Hundreds of images are providing a new view of this active world — one that offers crucial insight into how it formed, whether there’s an ocean hiding beneath its icy crust and the complex ways that compounds freeze out of its atmosphere and sculpt the surface. “I expected Pluto to be a scientific wonderland, but it did not have to be so beautiful,” says planetary scientist Leslie Young.

Nature | 18 min listen
This is an audio version of our feature: Pluto’s dark side spills its secrets — including hints of a hidden ocean