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Quaoar Showing Evidence of Volcanic Activity 53
calibanDNS writes "Recent findings at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy indicate that there may be volcanic activity on at least one object in the Kuiper belt."
Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty. -- Plato
a bit of wishful thinking... (Score:1)
Re:a bit of wishful thinking... (Score:4, Interesting)
"Particulate venting"? You mean volatile sublimation, like comets when they get near the Sun? I don't know of any asteroids that do that. And Quaoar is much too far from the Sun to expect that sort of behavior. (The maximum temperature you would expect is around 50 Kelvins. And that assumes an albedo of 0, which can't be the case if they can see it in the visible wavelengths.)
Re:a bit of wishful thinking... (Score:2)
Examples are so well known they're in introductory college-level texts like William Hartmann's Moons & Planets. This text mentions cases like asteroid 4015, whose 1979 discovery turned out to be a rediscovery of comet Wilson-Harrington, first discovered in 1949, and the case of asteroid 2090 Chiron, which suddenly sprouted a coma in 1988. Hartmann writes:
Re:a bit of wishful thinking... (Score:3, Informative)
b) Chiron and Wilson-Harrington are not asteroids. Both are comets. Chiron is nowhere near the main belt and is, rather, a type of object known as a Centaur. It's basically a kind of cometary body, not an asteroid.
c) While some dead comets are widely believed to be disguing themselves as asteroids, no one (except Hartmann perhaps) that I know wants to classify th
Re:a bit of wishful thinking... (Score:2)
Hartmann also mentions freshmen in the book's preface. Clearly the book was written for a wide college audience. Just because you don'
Re:a bit of wishful thinking... (Score:1)
In any case, I for one welcome our new venting Kuiper overlords.
Someone needs to say something (Score:3, Interesting)
1) It's really really cool to think that that far out into the solar system there could be geological activity going on. The sun's gotta be something like only -3 magnitude from out there.
2) This has got to be really hard to verify or know much about; although at least now when we get around to sending further probes into the Kuiper belt Quaoar will probably be way up there on the priority scale, which is a good thing.
Come to think of it, isn't there a probe that was recently launched headed to the Kuiper belt? Anyone know if by some great surrendipity it might be travelling in this region? I look forward to theories as to why Quaoar rather than Pluto or Sedna would be the first signs of geo activity in the outer solar system.
Just some random thoughts from an amateur astronomer...
Re:Someone needs to say something (Score:5, Informative)
The sun's gotta be something like only -3 magnitude from out there.
Quaoar is at 43 AU from the Sun. That means the Sun's luminosity is down by a factor of 43^2, or about 1900, from what we get at Earth. That's about 8 magnitudes, so the Sun is about a -18 magnitude object. Still by far the brightest thing around.
Besides, it doesn't matter much. Volcanism is an endogenic process, so the heat source would generally be internal. Surface temperature seldom sets much to do with geological activity. (Erosion is the main exception to this.)
This has got to be really hard to verify or know much about
More, and better, spectra. You don't need to get close to something to figure out what's going on, as much as it helps. Another group reportedly already has similar spectra and sees similar features.
Also, lab work on ice at these temperatures and pressures would help a lot. Although it's hard to figure out what ice will do over the course of 4 billion years...
Come to think of it, isn't there a probe that was recently launched headed to the Kuiper belt?
No. The New Horizons mission to Pluto hasn't launched yet.
I look forward to theories as to why Quaoar rather than Pluto or Sedna would be the first signs of geo activity in the outer solar system.
Re:Someone needs to say something (Score:2)
The summary is that each "magnitude" is 2.51 times the brightness, with brighter stars getting lower numbers. So, a magnitude 4 is 2.51 times brighter than a magnitude 5. Negative numbers mean very bright.
The sun is -26.75 from Earth.
Re:Someone needs to say something (Score:2)
Why, yes. Yes, it is an idiotic system. No, I don't know why we astronomers keep using it.
Re:Someone needs to say something (Score:2)
(sorry, I love astronomers, but I love puns more
Re:Someone needs to say something (Score:2)
Re:Someone needs to say something (Score:2)
Re:Someone needs to say something (Score:2)
Re:Someone needs to say something (Score:1)
We're doing lab work on this already. Here in the lab where I'm sitting now we study non-thermal crytallization of amorphous water using photons. Setup is a vacuum chamber with 10^-10 torr pressure and a cryostat able to cool the graphite sample to about 40 K. The amorphous ice on the sample is irradiated with photons from a laser or a lamp an
Re:Someone needs to say something (Score:2)
Provided that the behavior is linear, of course. But it's great to know that the experients are happening; I know a lot of planetary geologists who are looking forward to better lab data.
Re:Someone needs to say something (Score:1)
Acctually, we published data recently in Journal of Geophysical Research - Planets about the effect of photons on water ice films, don't know if the quality of the data is good enough for the geologists though.
Re:Someone needs to say something (Score:2)
Quaoar is very cold, only few kelvines and pure water at this temperature freezes into amorphous ice. What is not known is the chemical composition and the history of Quaoar. So it is possible that the ice on Quaoar formed at higher temperatures but this observation is not a proof of a continuous thermal process.
Re:Someone needs to say something (Score:2)
Re:Someone needs to say something (Score:2, Interesting)
a) there is some continuous process of heat
b) there is some form of radiation shielding
c) there is another process at work that mimics/underlies what we see in heat (spin dynamics, sufficient gravitation, etc?)
additions, subtractions, comments (from anyone)?
.
-shpoffo
Re:Someone needs to say something (Score:2)
Just this: Presuming that the effects are a.) real, and b.) the result of a collision, then how long could things remain more or less intact before they degrade back to their "normal" state?
In other words, how much time may be allowed to leave things as they are, following a collision, and will this amount of time render the unlikelihood of a collision some time during that permitted time frame a little more likely?
Re:Someone needs to say something (Score:1)
Your restatement, though, gets my imagination running. Is your question whether the probably of another hit during the lifespan of the ice crystals close enough to 'a sure thing' that the ice crystals never really go away? (This presumes some initial hit, or other activity which lea
Re:Someone needs to say something (Score:2)
Yes. Exactly that.
The possibility of a continuous presence of ice crystals on Quoaor as a result of regular collisions is f a s c i n a t i n g
Concur.
Once we have enough information about the material density of the Kuiper Belt we could have a better estimate of that probability
Act
Re:Someone needs to say something (Score:1)
1). Quoaoar's gravitation
2). Quoaoar's surface area
3). Water-ice physics in the Kuiper Belt
It seems reasonable that we may have a rough sense of surface area already. We know the surface temperture (50K), so perhaps an "astro-geo-physicist" could help put some brackets on the range of gravitation that Quoaoar may exhibit. Detailed water-ice physics for the Kuipe
Re:Someone needs to say something (Score:2)
You can say that again. (Score:2)
[...]
Just some random thoughts from an amateur astronomer..."
The words are less random than the thoughts. You can increase their enthalpy, while retaining their entropy, by rephrasing:
"It's really really cool to think that that far out into the solar system there could be geological activity going on, on Quaor. The sun's g
Re:Someone needs to say something (Score:2)
According to Celestia, it's -18.56, for what it's worth. (The full moon on Earth is something like -12.6, so the sun would still be bright enough to read by, by a long margin).
TWW
Quasar Showing Evidence of Volcanic Activity (Score:2, Funny)
Followed by an excited rush to the article to see how the heck a star can have volcanic activity, of course.
Re:Quasar Showing Evidence of Volcanic Activity (Score:2)
Re:Quasar Showing Evidence of Volcanic Activity (Score:2)
Re:Quasar Showing Evidence of Volcanic Activity (Score:2)
Re:Quasar Showing Evidence of Volcanic Activity (Score:2)
Re:Quasar Showing Evidence of Volcanic Activity (Score:2)
Pronounced kwa-whar why not spelled kwa-whar? (Score:1)
All this Quaoar, pronounced "kwa-whar", Al Quaeda "Al Ca-aida", Quatar "Cutter", Qadhafi "Kadafi", etc. is getting ridiculous.
Some perverted fascination with Qs I guess.
Re:Pronounced kwa-whar why not spelled kwa-whar? (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:Pronounced kwa-whar why not spelled kwa-whar? (Score:1)
Re:Pronounced kwa-whar why not spelled kwa-whar? (Score:3, Funny)
Perbli fer the seim rizn u dohnd spell fenetekli idha.
Re:Quasar Showing Evidence of Volcanic Activity (Score:2)
Be sure to read "Dragon's Egg" first, "Starquake" is the sequel.
so... (Score:1)
Re:so... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:so... (Score:2)
interesting (Score:1)
Re:interesting (Score:2)
yes but (Score:1)
More Kuiper Belt Information Here (Score:3, Informative)
Alien Volcanos... (Score:2)
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Re:Alien Volcanos... (Score:1, Insightful)
-297. No air. Ice. Dark. Megamiles away. Volcanos. (Score:2)