New Horizons Mission to Pluto

[Einion Yrth]

jmorgan said:

Must I admit I know not who she is.

Worth following.

[jmorgan]

cheers. bookmarked, but I see I have it already.... must have logged it but not visited for some reason. More interest will be taken.

[Einion Yrth]

"This doesn't look like Triton."

There goes Eric's favourite theory.

This is going to be interesting...

[MiniMan64]

It messes with my head that something so small and so distant has so much going on with it. It was supposed to be a dead icy rock.

[Einion Yrth]

MiniMan64 said:

It messes with my head that something so small and so distant has so much going on with it.

The observable universe is about 93 billion light years across, it's a reasonable assumption that it's all teeming with "stuff going on". Pluto id currently about four and a half light hours away. Boggle away...

[Eric Mc]

Einion Yrth said:

"This doesn't look like Triton."

There goes Eric's favourite theory.

This is going to be interesting...

Yep - the joys of "finding things out", as Carl Sagan used to say. The chap did admit that many did think Pluto would be a lot like Triton - and from a distance it did. But close up it's a whole different place.

[Einion Yrth]

Eric Mc said:

Einion Yrth said:

"This doesn't look like Triton."

There goes Eric's favourite theory.

This is going to be interesting...

Yep - the joys of "finding things out", as Carl Sagan used to say. The chap did admit that many did think Pluto would be a lot like Triton - and from a distance it did. But close up it's a whole different place.

Indeed, only pulling your leg. This looks like being a very interesting mission.

[Eric Mc]

I think we can safely say that virtually every single time a probe has passed a planet or a moon for the first time, the images sent back have revealed worlds that hardly ever matched what had been anticipated.

I'm really looking forward to the rest of the images as they start flowing in.

[El Guapo]

budfox said:

I could almost cry when I see what brilliance man is capable of and compare it to the horrors he can also inflict.

How true. I like to think that New Horizons will still be trundling through space long after Homo Sapiens has disappeared.

[Mojocvh]

[jmorgan]

They did say that have stereo data as well.

[MiniMan64]

The lack of impact craters is quite eerie!

It's going to be a busy 16 months for that team!

[Eric Mc]

budfox said:

I could almost cry when I see what brilliance man is capable of and compare it to the horrors he can also inflict.

I'm sure you'll get over it.

Humans come in all styles, shapes, sizes, characters etc etc.

Revel in the really great things we do.

[jmorgan]

MiniMan64 said:

The lack of impact craters is quite eerie!

It's going to be a busy 16 months for that team!

Ocean underneath, oozes up..........?

[Moonhawk]

jmorgan said:

MiniMan64 said:

The lack of impact craters is quite eerie!

It's going to be a busy 16 months for that team!

Ocean underneath, oozes up..........?

Possibly - or could be sublimation and re-deposition of surface ices as Pluto moves closer to and then further away from the sun.

Either way - the surface looks geologically young from what we have seen so far. Interesting.

[Eric Mc]

Pluto has a very eccentric orbit so must experience temperature variances in its 247 year passage around the sun.

[Eric Mc]

They discounted tidal effects of Charon at the press conference last night. Charon and Pluto are both tidally locked now so don't create any significant tides on each other.

At the moment they are at a bit of a loss to explain where internal heat might be being generated in either body. The other source of internal heat is radioactive decay and it is known now that Pluto is essentially a rocky body with ice deposits (rather than an icy body). You get radiocative decay with rocks - so the assumption at the moment is that it must be due to radioactive decay in the rocks. However, a lot more data will be needed before any consensus is arrived at.

All very fascinating.

[Eric Mc]

The question is "when" the tidal lock happened. They are surmising that the surfaces of Pluto and Charon may be less than 100 million years old. Tidal lock could have happened 3 billion years ago. That's the problem.

[jmorgan]

How about a mush under a crust rather than ocean. Gravity will pull it back but enough can get blasted away to make it to Charon.

[Eric Mc]

What keeps it mushy?