Pluto May Have Deep Seas and Ancient Tectonic Faults 47
astroengine (1577233) writes "In July 2015 we get our first close look at the dwarf planet Pluto and its moon, Charon — a fact that has scientists hypothesizing more than ever about what we might see there. One of the latest ideas put forward is that perhaps the collision that likely formed Pluto and Charon heated the interior of Pluto enough to give it an internal liquid water ocean, which also gave the small world a short-lived plate tectonics system, like that of Earth."
Okay, so Pluto isn't perfect (Score:5, Funny)
But seriously. It's barely considered a planet and now people want to point out its faults? Leave Pluto alone!!!
Re:Okay, so Pluto isn't perfect (Score:5, Funny)
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But what was the influence of social media on the build up to this shift?
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The shock and awe of the situation was overwhelming. Almost on the scale of a WMD.
Re:Okay, so Pluto isn't perfect (Score:4, Funny)
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You sir, may have excellent potential in the exciting career of government alphabet soup.
https://www.usajobs.gov/JobSearch/Search/GetResults?Keyword=Alphabet Soup [usajobs.gov]
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We need to seriously hire that "Leave Britanny Alone" guy [youtube.com] to make another video for Pluto.
Re:Okay, so Pluto isn't perfect (Score:5, Funny)
They are minor faults
Wormface does not approve of this. (Score:1)
How will the Wormfaces set up their base on Pluto?
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I was thinking Emory and Oglethorpe from ATHF, [wikia.com] not Wormfaces...
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Have Space Suit, Will Travel.
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Have Space Suit, Will Travel.
Go, Heinlein!
It's a Planet (Score:1, Informative)
It was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh. Pluto is the only planet to be discovered by an American.
Tombaugh sat in 30 degree temperatures with a wooden telescope (that he built himself at his own expense) laboriously taking pictures at long intervals so he could measure (by flipping photographic plates back and forth) if anything moved.
It wasn't until he was able to use a 13-inch astrograph that he found Pluto in 1930. This guy was a stone cold badass. Nobody has any right to deny him his discovery.
http://en. [wikipedia.org]
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" Pluto is the only planet to be discovered by an American."
What about exoplanets? Surely many of those were discovered by americans.
Of course they are beyond the jurisdiction of the IAU
Re:It's a Planet (Score:5, Insightful)
He discovered the first Kuiper belt object.
You can think of him as an American Piazzi [wikipedia.org], if you'd like.
Re:It's a Planet (Score:5, Insightful)
Care to offer a definition of "planet" that would include Pluto but rule out Eris/Sedna/Makemake/Haumea/Ceres/etc?
Pluto is the only planet to be discovered by an American.
American astronomer Michael Brown discovered Eris, Sedna, Makemake, and Haumea.
Nobody has any right to deny him his discovery.
Nobody has. He's still listed as the discoverer of Pluto. Just as Piazzi is still listed as the discoverer of Ceres, even though it too lost its early status as a "planet".
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Why would we want to rule out Eris/Sedna/Makemake/Haumea/Ceres/etc?
I, for one, am not wedded to nine planets. Or eight. Or fourteen, for that matter....
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It's all somewhat arbitrary in any case.
It's all just a matter of what we choose to call things and how we choose to categorize things. Lumping things into categories based on similar characteristics is helpful for a number of reasons.
If you go back and look at the history of when and why Ceres (and Vista, and Pallas, etc.) was demoted from planetary status, you'll see all sorts of similarities. The continued discovery of Kupier bodies shows Pluto was part of a larger community, just like Ceres.
What folk
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Won't argue with that.
And you're telling me this why? Why didn't you also explain that water was wet?
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I, for one, am not wedded to nine planets. Or eight. Or fourteen, for that matter....
Fair enough. My mistake. Most people who whine about Pluto in the terms you used want to go back to 9 planets, and only 9, because "tradition".
I'd prefer to create a, admittedly still arbitrary, broad definition of planet as "any natural object that is above [a certain size**], and is not a star or stellar remnant." So brown dwarves, but not white. The Moon is a planet, as is Titan and the Galilean moons. Pluto is a planet, but so is Charon. And Ceres - as well as hundreds, possibly thousands of KBO/Oort-ob
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Tombaugh sat in 30 degree temperatures with a wooden telescope (that he built himself at his own expense) ...
I was thinking to myself that that sounded quite pleasant until I remembered that American degrees aren't quite the same as everyone else's.
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Pluto is the only planet to be discovered by an American.
How is this in anyway relevant to whether it is a planet or not?
Pluto Rulz! (Score:2)
Pluto Rulz! It's still the best planet we've never visited! I say forget Mars, the smart Real Estate investor will be seeking beach front property on Pluto!
Ancient Teutonic Knights... (Score:2)
... that's awesome!
The brain is a funny thing...
Then's it's a planet. (Score:3, Informative)
You hear me? A planet.
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You hear me? A planet.
You're entitled to your opinion, even if it's rather non-standard as to what does or doesn't constitute a planet. Personally, I don't think anything that doesn't have a) solid ground and b) an atmosphere to speak of should be considered a planet; as such, I recognize only two planets in the solar system, Venus and Earth. (Unfortunately astronomers keep on disagreeing with me on the matter.)
Now I'm joking, of course, but really, my definition is at least as good as yours.
What's more, what people like you fai
"scientists hypothesizing"... (Score:2)
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Would that make him a Plutocrat?
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That must be painful.
If charon was formed at the the formation ... (Score:4, Insightful)
... of the solar system 4 billion years ago and not more recently , then the chances of that water still being liquid without any further external heating - the energy from the sun at plutos orbit is so slight its irrelevant - I suspect are pretty damn close to zero.
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I don't know many antifreezes that work at -230C , do you?
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Pal, any radioactivity inside pluto has long since decayed. Its a TINY world with no internal or external heat source. The chances of anything still being liquid inside are pretty much zero.