FILE PHOTO: The planet Pluto is pictured in a handout image made up of four images from New Horizons' Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) taken in July 2015 combined with color data from the Ralph instrument to create this enhanced color global view. NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Handout via REUTERS
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pluto, a frigid little world inhabiting the solar system's outer reaches, may have been born as a warmer place sheltering a subsurface ocean that still exists today, researchers said on Monday.
An analysis of images of its surface taken in 2015 by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft and computer simulations of the dwarf planet's interior led the researchers to propose a "hot start" scenario for Pluto's formation some 4.5 billion years ago as the solar system, including Earth, took shape.
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