Posted on 08/19/2015 11:44:33 AM PDT by Citizen Zed
Buddy, can you spare 16 seconds? Bjorn Jonsson, a 3D computer graphics expert, used publicly available photos on the New Horizon’s website to create a zippy flyby of Pluto that gets you in and out in just seconds. But hold on! If you use the pause button, you’ll see something amazing — Pluto’s dark backside illuminated by sunlight reflecting off its largest moon Charon.
Even at Pluto’s enormous distance from the sun of over 3 billion miles, enough sunlight falls on its 750-mile-wide moon Charon to provide a faint illumination on one hemisphere of the dwarf planet. The ring you see around Pluto is formed of haze layers, probably methane, in an atmosphere largely made up of nitrogen. And that’s the big question. Since we now know that its atmosphere is continually being lost to space, how does it get replenished?
“More nitrogen has to come from somewhere to resupply both the nitrogen ice that is moving around Pluto’s surface in seasonal cycles, and the nitrogen that is escaping off the top of the atmosphere as the result of heating by ultraviolet light from the Sun,” said Kelsi Singer, a postdoctoral researcher at Southwest Research Institute in a recent press release.
Both Singer and New Horizons principle investigator Alan Stern wonder if comets crashing into the dwarf planet might do the trick. Not only could comets contribute nitrogen, but they could also excavate craters in Pluto’s crust exposing additional nitrogen ice. While both are plausible, calculations show that the amount released wouldn’t be enough to sustain an atmosphere through geologic time. Instead, Stern and company think that geologic activity within Pluto’s crust and mantle may contribute, too.
Pluto’s land forms suggest heat is rising beneath the surface, with troughs of dark matter either collecting, or bubbling up, between flat segments of crust.
“Our pre-flyby prediction, made when we submitted the paper, is that it’s most likely that Pluto is actively resupplying nitrogen from its interior to its surface, possibly meaning the presence of ongoing geysers or cryovolcanism,” said Stern.
Maybe it doesn’t get replenished and Pluto is a lot younger than institutional science believes it to be.
or maybe deep space has an atmosphere!
okay, never mind...
forget I said that
A lot of reaction mass there for a nuclear-powered rocket to make a return trip.
Of course, it’s density is probably pretty low. But enough to refract the Sun’s rays around the planet.
Oh dear. I called it a “planet.” The language police will be after me now.
Cool video ping.
During one of the briefings I heard one of the lead scientists running the mission call it a planet and then say, “You heard me, it’s a planet”. You’re in good company
Ha that’s a relief!
Dat's racis'
(The planet is not named Hercules after all)
I guess it's not "settled science," then.
I mean, since a scientist said it.
Yeah, I’m hangin’ my head in shame.
Kewl. Thanks.
http://www.space.com/12710-pluto-defender-alan-stern-dwarf-planet-interview.html
Damn, I was kind of hoping for a "TRUMP 2016" sign lit up in neon lights - just to see the reaction of the libtards and the GOPe. :>)
What, Pluto has only gone around the Sun 40 times?
Yea, Show those freaking Sizists a thing or two!
Maybe. Not like anyone was here to witness it 40 Pluto-years ago.
Thanks colorado tanker, extra to APoD.
Not hard to figure out what a stable orbiting body was doing 41 revolutions ago, even if you weren’t around.
Otherwise you have to concede that the universe may have come into existence twenty minutes ago - all you have are some vague memories that may have been created then too.
The Pluto system is anything but stable. It’s an extremely chaotic system.
Pluto could be a former moon of Neptune... or it could be a Kuiper Belt object perturbed from a more distant orbit... or it could be a captured interstellar object. There are many many possibilities other than “as it is now, so it always was”. Planetary formation theories are extremely raw, wild guesses, and new data constantly forces changes to them rather than confirming existing hypotheses.
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