A billion miles past Pluto, New Horizon flies by Ultima Thule

[derspiess]

The surface is less than a hundred million years old!? How?
Mountains the size of the Alps made of H2O, what the ...?

Yeah, amazing you nerds didn't have every detail ironed out before this.

[Tonitrus]

The surface is less than a hundred million years old!? How?
Mountains the size of the Alps made of H2O, what the ...?

My completely amateur, pulled-out-of-my-ass theory?  Perhaps more evidence that Pluto is a lost comet/comet-rock mix from the Oort cloud (and thus possibly proof that it shouldn't be a "planet" )?

[jimmy olsen]

The surface is less than a hundred million years old!? How?
Mountains the size of the Alps made of H2O, what the ...?

My completely amateur, pulled-out-of-my-ass theory?  Perhaps more evidence that Pluto is a lost comet/comet-rock mix from the Oort cloud (and thus possibly proof that it shouldn't be a "planet" )?

That's not the problem however. If the surface is young, that means that there are active geological processes at work on Pluto. However, that requires a tremendous amount of heat. A planet the size of Venus or Earth has enough mass that the interior is heated by the pressure exerted on the interior. Pluto is much too small for that to be the case.

The large moons of Jupiter are geologically active because the tug of war between Jupiter and the other large satellites stretches and squeezes them, heating up their interior. Pluto and Charon are tidally locked, so they are not exerting that kind of pressure on each other. 

So where is the heat coming from?

[Tonitrus]

So where is the heat coming from?

But seriously...they based their age estimation on evidence of surface impact.  Maybe there is just far less shit to impact with it way out there in the outer solar system?

[jimmy olsen]

So where is the heat coming from?

ALIENS

But seriously...they based their age estimation on evidence of surface impact.  Maybe there is just far less shit to impact with it way out there in the outer solar system?

Everything we know about the solar system says there should be more out there.

[HVC]

How plutonium got us to Pluto. Plus the guy just looks like science

http://youtu.be/498pOIm8Qbc

[Syt]

But seriously...they based their age estimation on evidence of surface impact.  Maybe there is just far less shit to impact with it way out there in the outer solar system?

Pluto being very small, it would also attract much few projectiles than, say, Jupiter or Neptune.

[Razgovory]

The surface is less than a hundred million years old!? How?
Mountains the size of the Alps made of H2O, what the ...?

My completely amateur, pulled-out-of-my-ass theory?  Perhaps more evidence that Pluto is a lost comet/comet-rock mix from the Oort cloud (and thus possibly proof that it shouldn't be a "planet" )?

That's not the problem however. If the surface is young, that means that there are active geological processes at work on Pluto. However, that requires a tremendous amount of heat. A planet the size of Venus or Earth has enough mass that the interior is heated by the pressure exerted on the interior. Pluto is much too small for that to be the case.

The large moons of Jupiter are geologically active because the tug of war between Jupiter and the other large satellites stretches and squeezes them, heating up their interior. Pluto and Charon are tidally locked, so they are not exerting that kind of pressure on each other. 

So where is the heat coming from?

Pluto could have been a moon 100 million years ago that got bored and went off on it's own.

[Syt]

So, in the bottom left would be the Mountains of Madness? Or R'lyeh?

[The Brain]

Hillary isn't even POTUS yet.

[Syt]

Hillary isn't even POTUS yet.

But would you explore her mons?

[The Brain]

Hillary isn't even POTUS yet.

But would you explore her mons?

[jimmy olsen]

A bunch of awesome stuff on Pluto has been coming out recently

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/1110/Does-Pluto-have-volcanoes-If-so-how-did-it-get-them-video

Does Pluto have volcanoes? If so, how did it get them? (+video)

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has spotted a pair of peaks that might be volcanoes, suggesting that Pluto may have an internal heat source.


By Nola Taylor Redd, SPACE.com  November 10, 2015

National Harbor, Md. — Icy volcanoes may lie on the southern rim of Pluto's frozen heart.

Images from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft have identified two peaks that tower nearly 4 miles (6 kilometers) high over the surface of the dwarf planet, and scientists say the peaks' physical features suggest they might be volcanoes.

"These are two really extraordinary features," Oliver White, a New Horizons postdoctoral researcher with NASA's Ames Research Center in California, said today (Nov. 9) during a news conference here at the 47th annual meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). "Nothing like this has ever been seen in the solar system," he said.

A tiny, icy world at the edge of the solar system, Pluto remained largely invisible to scientists until July 2015, when the New Horizons space probe flew past it, giving humanity its first good look at the dwarf planet's surface. Before the New Horizons flyby, most scientists thought Pluto would prove to be too small to maintain the internal heat needed to power geological processes such as glacier flows and volcanism, according to scientists at the news conference. But the fast-moving spacecraft revealed a far younger surface than scientists had expected, suggesting that geological processes are taking place on Pluto, and that something must be keeping things warm beneath the surface.



Two enormous mountains, spanning hundreds of miles across, sit at the southern edge of the heart-shaped region on the surface of Pluto. The mountains have been informally named Wright Mons and Picard Mons, and at their crests, each peak hosts a central crater, reminiscent of peaks called "shield volcanoes" on Earth.

"Whatever they are, they're definitely weird" — 'volcanoes' is the least weird hypothesis at the moment," White said at the news conference.

Although the features bear a strong similarity to volcanoes, New Horizons researcher Jeff Moore, of NASA Ames Research Field, said in an earlier session that they were not yet ready to conclusively pronounce that there is evidence for cryovolcanism on Pluto.

"These look suspicious, and we're looking very closely," Moore said.

Scientists don't yet know what could be generating the heat inside Pluto necessary to create a volcano on the surface. One possibility, also presented at the conference, is that an ammonia-water slurry mantle lies beneath the surface, according to a statement from AAS. The research, performed by graduate student Alex Trowbridge and professor Jay Melosh, of Purdue University in Indiana, suggests that, as cooler material sinks through the subsurface layers, hot material might rise, leading to geological activity that could include cryovolcanism.

Another possibility, which White focused on, has to do with a gradually cooling rocky core, originally heated during the dwarf planet's formation. The heat required to melt ices would be significantly lower than those required to release rock, allowing the gradual mobilization of material that could, in theory, erupt through a volcano.

"While there's maybe less heat to go around, perhaps you get more bang for your buck," White said.


The first of their kind

Though the term "cryovolcanism" has been applied to other objects in the solar system, White stressed that the features on Pluto are unique. Saturn's frozen moon Enceladus is known for spewing material from its southern pole, but the source comes from fissures in the ground rather than mountainous features. And while cryovolcanism has been hypothesized to exist on Titan, another Saturn moon, White pointed out that those cryovolcanoes were identified by radar and are still under debate. Pluto's features, by contrast, are clearly visible and bear stark similarities to Earth's volcanoes.

"This is the first time where we see what seem to be tall volcanic edifices," White said.

The two slopes are lightly cratered, White told Space.com, which suggests that they are younger than the northern terrains of Pluto, though not nearly as young as the "heart" of Pluto, Sputnik Planum. Scientists aren't certain of the mountains' composition, though White suggested it could be nitrogen ice. The thin atmosphere would likely allow for the fluidization of the material across the surface.

The two mountains lay along the day-night line of Pluto when they were imaged by New Horizons. Picard Mons, the larger of the two features, lies in the twilight region, so it may not be possible to understand its composition with current data. But White expressed hope that upcoming data may reveal secrets about the composition of the more brightly lit Wright Mons.

Even more exciting is the possibility that the two might be part of a larger field of volcanoes. White said that the close proximity of the two features might indicate that even more cryovolcanoes exist beyond the spacecraft's field of view. However, there is no way to spot them using data from the New Horizons flyby.

"We'll have to go back in a hundred years and see," White said.

[jimmy olsen]

Neat!

http://news.discovery.com/space/pluto-may-have-nitrogen-lakes-that-freeze-and-thaw-160328.htm

Data collected by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft shows that tiny, distant Pluto not only likely has an ocean beneath its frozen face, but also may have had lakes on its surface in the recent past and likely will have them again in the future.

Even on its warmest days, Pluto is far too cold for surface lakes made of water, but they could contain liquid nitrogen during periods of time when the planet's atmosphere bulks up.

Pluto, which takes 248 years to circle the sun, turns out to have large swaths of real estate with direct overhead sunlight due to an extreme axial tilt of 120 degrees, relative to its orbital plane. Earth, by comparison, is tilted 23 degrees.

That gives Pluto a much broader range of tropical latitudes than Earth, noted New Horizons scientist Richard Binzel, with Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Because arctic and tropical zones alternatively extend over such wide swaths of the dwarf planet's surface, Pluto has regions where both extremes occur, though not at the same time.

Pluto also has a wobble, which causes its axis to tilt up an additional 20 degrees from its present orientation, triggering long-term climate cycles that far exceed anything experienced on Earth, Binzel said.

Pluto is now in an intermediate phase between its climate extremes, with the last peak occurring less than 1 million years ago. Temperatures today measure about minus-400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Variations in the amount of sunlight falling on Pluto have direct impacts on Pluto's atmosphere, noted New Horizon's lead scientist Alan Stern, with the Southwest Research Institute.

"We find that Pluto's atmospheric pressure today is atypically low and that in the past it could have been 1,000 to 10,000 times higher," exceeding the pressure of Mars by up to 40 times, Stern said.

Computer models show that when Pluto's temperature and atmospheric pressure are high, conditions could be suitable for liquid nitrogen.

ANALYSIS: Pluto Moon Charon 'Bursting' With Frozen Ocean?

Additional evidence comes from New Horizons itself. High-resolution images taken during the July 14 flyby reveal features that look like they could have been carved by liquids. The pictures also show what appears to be a frozen lake, measuring about 20 miles across at its widest point, that is located just north of Sputnik Planum, the western lobe of Pluto's smooth, heart-shaped region.

"Pluto is so dynamic that different cases may apply in different epics," Stern said. "We found this little planet where everything is coupled together."

The research was unveiled at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference last week in Texas and has been submitted for publication in the journal Icarus.

[Malthus]

Hillary isn't even POTUS yet.

Neither is Cthulhu.

But not for lack of the Republican Party trying, apparently.