---
title: "In 11 Years, Pluto’s Atmosphere Will Be Completely Frozen Solid"
description: "It's about to be winter on Pluto. When it is, scientists predict that Pluto's entire atmosphere will condense into a layer of frost."
date: "2019-04-30"
modified: "2019-04-30"
authors:
  - name: "Dan Robitzski"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/11-years-pluto-atmosphere-completely-frozen"
categories:
  - "Off-World"
  - "Space"
tags:
  - "Pluto"
  - "space"
  - "the digest"
---

# In 11 Years, Pluto’s Atmosphere Will Be Completely Frozen Solid

![It's about to be Winter on Pluto. When it is, scientists predict that Pluto's entire atmosphere will condense into a layer of frost.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/11-years-pluto-atmosphere-completely-frozen.png>)
*\<em\>Image: NASA\</em\>*

## White Christmas

It's about to be winter on Pluto, the most distant planet — well, [former planet](<https://futurism.com/scientists-weigh-in-on-the-possibility-of-life-in-plutos-oceans>) — from the Sun.

When winter comes in 2030 — remember that one Pluto year is about 248 Earth years — new research suggests that Pluto's thin, Nitrogen-heavy atmosphere will completely collapse, condensing and freezing into a layer of solid frost, [according to *CNN*](<https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/29/world/pluto-atmosphere-disappearing-scn/index.html>). It's an epic cosmic event, involving temperatures of nearly 400 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, that could shed new light on how atmospheres behave under extreme conditions.

## Long Time Coming

The discovery came after astronomers collected data on Pluto for 28 years. First shared on the [preprint server ArXiv](<https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.02315>) in March and since published in the journal *Astronomy and Astrophysics*, the scientists observed Pluto every time it passed in front of a star. By measuring how much light Pluto absorbed, they collected data about its thin, fluctuating atmosphere.

"The atmospheric pressure has tripled over the past three decades, but as the planet orbits, our modelling showed that most of the atmosphere would condense out to almost nothing left, University of Tasmania astrophysicist Andrew Cole told *CNN*. "What our predictions show is that by 2030 the atmosphere is going to frost out and vanish around the whole planet."

**READ MORE:** [Winter is coming to destroy Pluto's atmosphere by 2030, study says](<https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/29/world/pluto-atmosphere-disappearing-scn/index.html>) \[*CNN*\]

**More on Pluto:** *Scientists May Have Solved the Mystery Behind Pluto’s “Bladed Terrain”*

## Author
Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://x.com/danrobitzski>)