NASA are set to reveal an "amazing" discovery on Thursday (Friday in Australia), according to one of the space agency's senior scientists.
Dr Alan Stern, a planetary scientist and Principal Investigator on Nasa's New Horizons Pluto mission, made the exciting announcement whilst speaking at the University of Alberta in Canada.
Whilst speaking about the latest images of Pluto captured by the New Horizons probe, Stern said: "Nasa won't let me tell you what we're going to tell you on Thursday. It's amazing."
Last week, Nasa unveiled new images of the surfce of Pluto, which show a landscape of mountains, craters and gorges.
As reported by The Guardian, Stern said: "This world is alive."
"It has weather, it has hazes in the atmosphere, active geology... Every week I am floored."
There is no word yet on what the announcement could be, with Nasa taking the same line of secrecy as they did at their last big event - the announcement of the discovery of water on Mars.
However, a number of unknowns remain. Pluto has vast mountainous dune fields, a multicoloured surface, and a number of other mysterious features that have not been explained by science.
Nasa has had a year of big discoveries. From the discovery of flowing water on Mars, to the identification of 'Earth 2.0' - Kepler 452b, the most Earth-like planet every discovered - the leading space agency has been holding momentous announcements fairly regularly over the last few months.
As Stern said, "2015 will be a year in textbooks forever," as the year in which mankind discovered so much about its solar system.
http://electronicsfeed.com/science-27/new-horizons-sends-back-new-images-of-pluto-s-moons-nix-and-hydra-185.html
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Another article released a few hours ago.....
NASA is set to announce an “amazing” finding Thursday about Pluto, claims a lead scientist with the agency — which has taken to social media to dispel the rumor.
The mysterious announcement is said to be about the findings of the New Horizons space probe, launched in 2006 and inching closer to the dwarf planet ever since.
“NASA won’t let me tell you what we’re going to tell you on Thursday,” Dr. Alan Stern, the mission’s lead scientist, told students on Monday at the University of Alberta in Canada, according to The Guardian. “It’s amazing.”
“This world is alive,” Stern added. “It has weather, it has hazes in the atmosphere, active geology.”
But NASA said there’s nothing out of this world to announce.
“There is a false rumor going around that there will be a BIG New Horizons science announcement tomorrow,” according to a tweet from the New Horizons team on Wednesday. “Completely false.”
http://nypost.com/2015/10/08/nasa-to-announce-amazing-finding-about-pluto/
