Leonard Granson, age 8, of Coaldale, Alberta, Canada, for his question:

Could anything live on Pluto?

Astronomers think that Pluto is about half as wide as our earth. It is way out there, pedaling around the outer limits of the solar system. The closest it comes to us is about 2,760 million miles. Even our best telescopes cannot reveal much detail across such an immense distance. So we don't know much about its surface or its atmosphere. However, scientists can make a few educated guesses about what things are like on Pluto.

Its days may be long or short. But they are never very bright and always colder than any weather we can imagine. We can be sure of this because Pluto is so far from the sun. Nobody knows whether there is moisture and oxygen. Life on earth needs warmth and sunshine, water and oxygen. Certainly Pluto has not enough of these basics for most of our plants and animals. They could not survive there. However, scientists have found a few tiny earthlings that can live without oxygen and survive below freezing. Maybe Pluto has a variety of living things of this sort. But nobody knows at present whether this is true or even possible.