The Pluto flyby has shown us how well the little planet that could is served by its name. Pluto was the Roman god of the underworld (Hades in Greek), whose queen, Proserpina (Persephone) spent spring and summer with her mother, the earth goddess Demeter, in the upper world, and fall and winter with her gloomily handsome hubby, the lord of the dead. Indeed, this arrangement was the reason we have spring and summer, when the earth is recalled to life and warmth, and fall and winter, when the earth dies coldly to itself.

Pluto the planet has icy mountains and geological activity, suggesting heat somewhere at some point:

“That leaves rethinking how thermodynamics apply at the dwarf planet,” Mika McKinnon writes. ...

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