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New Horizons Spacecraft Spots Strange Snail-Like Object

By R. Siva Kumar | Update Date: Jan 12, 2016 10:59 AM EST

Some images of Pluto in a recent batch of New Horizons show some exciting scenes. There is one strange shot of a snail-like being that is slowly and heavily "inching towards what appears to be a crossroads at first glance", according to HNGN.

However, NASA experts feel that the image, captured by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), is just a block of ice that is "floating in a dense solid nitrogen".

There is a dragging effect due to the "convection cell", the kind that blows the wind on earth, says Tech Times.

The object is situated in the region named Sputnik Planum, dominated by nitrogen-filled ice, according to a Daily Mail report.

Shot by the New Horizons spacecraft, the high-resolution image was taken during its July 14, 2015, flyby and transmitted in late December with other images of the icy Sputnik Planum area.

However, a number of debates are expected to rage over the image of the object on Pluto. It is not clear whether the image is a blob of ice while conspiracy theorists argue otherwise. NASA's Curiosity Rover, for instance, has caught images that have been thought to be "iguanas, alien cutlery, pyramids" and many other things, according to HNGN.

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