Dwarf planet Pluto may be hiding an icy ocean beneath its surface, as per the two new reports published by the Science Journal Nature.

The dwarf planet Pluto - with a 3.67-billion miles distance from the sun, has a surface temperature of -400 degrees Fahrenheit. Scientists from MIT speculate the planet may have an ocean of liquid water, or slushy ice, just beneath its surface.

The papers seek to explain why an ocean under the heart of the Pluto is the leading theory to explain a mystery about why Pluto's heart-shaped basin never faces Pluto's moon, called Charon, reported by Nature.

Richard Binzel, an MIT professor has been part of studying dwarf plant said;" we expected that Pluto would be full of surprises, but this one knocked our socks off".

The first research paper, from the University of Arizona, reports that Sputnik Planitia, Pluto's ice-covered basin, is filled with ice and has an altered tidal force between the dwarf planer and its moon Charon.

The second paper, from the University of California, suggests the reorientation was caused by tidal forces; as an effect of this, a "slushy" partially-frozen surface on the underground ocean might just grow.

The data was gathered from NASA's New Horizons space probe, which passed by Pluto in July 2015. The researchers from MIT have also been a part of the New Horizon team.

"A thick, heavy ocean, the new data suggest, may have served as a 'gravitational anomaly," reported by MIT News, which would factor heavily in Pluto and Charon's gravitational "tug-of-war".

According to CNN, Sputnik Planitia might have formed billions of years ago when an asteroid slammed into Pluto's surface, leaving behind a crater that filled up with nitrogen ice throughout the last 10 million years.

NASA's New Horizons mission, launched in 2006, captured numerous images of this luminous region when it passed by Pluto in 2015.

Indeed, if the alleged existence of water on Pluto is confirmed, then there's reason to be excited for the possibility that life may exist on it.

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