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Space Technology

Is Pluto Actually a Mash-Up of a Billion Comets? (smithsonianmag.com) 74

Posted by BeauHD from the which-one-is-it dept.
Scientists from the Southwest Research Institute suggest Pluto may be a comet, as opposed to a planet or dwarf planet. According to a study published in the journal Icarus, Pluto could be made up of billions of comets all mashed together. Smithsonian reports: Scientists had long believed the dwarf planet Pluto was formed the way planets come to be: they start as swirling dust that's gradually pulled together by gravity. But with the realization that Pluto was a Kuiper belt dwarf planet, researchers began speculating about the origins of the icy world. The researchers turned to Sputnik Planitia -- the western lobe of the massive heart-shaped icy expanse stamped on Pluto's side -- for the task. As Christopher Glein, lead author of the paper and researcher at the Southwest Research Institute, explains to [Popular Science editor Neel V. Patel], the researchers used the data from New Horizons on this icy expanse to estimate the amount of nitrogen on Pluto and the amount that's escaped from its atmosphere.

Glein explains the conclusions in a statement: "We found an intriguing consistency between the estimated amount of nitrogen inside the [Sputnik Planitia] glacier and the amount that would be expected if Pluto was formed by the agglomeration of roughly a billion comets or other Kuiper Belt objects similar in chemical composition to 67P, the comet explored by Rosetta." The report goes on to mention a few caveats. "For one, researchers aren't sure that comet 67P has an average comet composition," reports Smithsonian. "For another, New Horizons only captured information about Pluto at a specific point in time, which means nitrogen rates could have changed over the last billions of years. [T]here's also still the possibility Pluto formed from cold ices with a chemical composition to that of the sun."
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Is Pluto Actually a Mash-Up of a Billion Comets? More

Is Pluto Actually a Mash-Up of a Billion Comets?

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  • So ist the Earth (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 02, 2018 @03:07AM (#56714392)

    The earth is also a "smashup" of all kinds of space debris including comets.

    • Yes. This news seems to be a result of someone re-stating how large objects form in the solar system to make it sound sexier encountering a journalist who has never heard of this before. Tomorrow's article will be "Sun formed from particles created at the birth of the universe" to be followed by "Earth contains fossilized remnants of a 6 billion-year-old supernova".
  • You might as well just call it a planet. Because why not?

    • You might as well just call it a planet. Because why not?

      I would hope that astronomers would have something more important to do, than splitting hairs over the exact definition of a planet.

      I suggest that astronomers tear a page out of Existentialism dogma, and say that Pluto just is. So your suggestion would read:

      You might as well just call it a Pluto.

      As in:

      “Last night in the latrine. Didn't you whisper that we couldn't punish you to that other dirty son of a bitch we don't like? What's his name?"

      "Yossarian, sir," Lieutenant Scheisskopf said.

      "Yes, Yossarian. That's right. Yossarian. Yossarian? Is that his name? Yossarian? What the hell kind of a name is Yossarian?"

      Lieutenant Scheisskopf had the facts at his finger tips. "It's Yossarian's name, sir," he explained.” Joseph Heller, Catch-22

      • I think most Americans have forgotten the political aspects of Pluto, but I kind of wonder if European astronomers have not, and were annoyed at the political process from nearly a hundred years ago. To enhance your point:

        As long as we're making up definitions, we could easily say, "Planets are a body of certain size orbiting a star.......and as a special case, Pluto." Definitions being entirely arbitrary, such a definition would help remind future generations that definitions in fact are.......entirely a

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tsa ( 15680 )

          Why is it called Pluto anyway? Who names a planet after a cartoon dog?

          • Why is it called Pluto anyway? Who names a planet after a cartoon dog?

            To get revenge on the *elite* astronomers I'm going to change its name and unofficially call the the Planet Spongebob.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • The sole function of a classification is to group all like things in a way that distinguishes them unambiguously from all unlike things, without respect to space, time, means of observing or observer. In other words, the distinguishing feature must be intrinsic not extrinsic.

        If A is the set of all objects in the class, B is the set of all things not in the class, E is the empty set and U is the universal set, A /\ B = E and A \/ B = U.

        Since only prediction is valid, the class has a prediction P such that fo

  • Hmmm (Score:3)

    by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Saturday June 02, 2018 @03:44AM (#56714446)
    According to my own calculation based on the planet/dwarf planet structure, I'd say only 999,980,443 comets.

  • It's a dog.

  • They're just not going to stop until they permanently eliminate it as a planet...
  • Well, then the Earth is nothing but an untold number of billions of asteroids mashed together. Time to downgrade Earth!

  • Pluto won't be the first thing in the cosmos to break definitions and it won't be the last. The current definition of planet isn't a good one.

    "A celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit."

    But if these bodies at some point have a molten core, complex geological features, and long-term orbital stability,

  • It's really mysterious to me why so many "scientists" seem to have it in for Pluto... sometimes called "The Dark Planet", the only conclusion I can come to is racism.

  • 1. It has liquid water
    2. It has an evolving surface
    3. Including atmosphere, it's larger than Earth

    What we know about the Kuipier Belt

    1. It has an Earth-sized "dwarf planet" (it's a dwarf because it hasn't cleared its orbit, even if it's the size of Jupiter), although Pluto is not that planet

    I see nothing here that says "comet" or indeed anything that makes that relevant as to what class of object it is.

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