'Something Weird Is Going On' as New Horizons Approaches Distant Asteroid (popularmechanics.com) 83
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft passed Pluto in 2015. But now it's getting strange readings while approaching its next destination, the Ultima Thule asteroid.
Popular Mechanics reports: Ultima Thule appears to not have a light curve, which is perplexing scientists... Asteroids like Ultima Thule reflect sunlight -- that's why they're bright spots instead of dark spots -- but the amount of light they reflect depends on how much of their surface is facing the Sun. The bigger their surface area, the brighter they become. Small asteroids like Ultima Thule aren't perfectly round, which means how much of their surface is facing the Sun changes as they rotate....
Ultima Thule isn't changing its brightness at all. New Horizons has been watching Ultima Thule for three months and hasn't spotted any brightness change, which is really odd. Ultima Thule is definitely not spherical -- astronomers determined that a year ago -- so why doesn't its brightness change?
One theory is that the New Horizon's probe is perfectly aligned with the asteroid's axis of rotation, so it's only seeing Ultima Thule's north (or south) pole. Another is that the asteroid is surrounded by dust clouds that "even out" its light curve. But that usually only happens when asteroids are near the sun and heating up, whereas Ultima Thule "is cold and dark and shouldn't have any dust...."
"Fortunately, we might not have to wait long for an answer to this problem. New Horizons will fly by Ultima Thule on January 1, and should give us high-resolution photos of the entire system," the article concludes. "With any luck, those photos will solve the mystery."
Popular Mechanics reports: Ultima Thule appears to not have a light curve, which is perplexing scientists... Asteroids like Ultima Thule reflect sunlight -- that's why they're bright spots instead of dark spots -- but the amount of light they reflect depends on how much of their surface is facing the Sun. The bigger their surface area, the brighter they become. Small asteroids like Ultima Thule aren't perfectly round, which means how much of their surface is facing the Sun changes as they rotate....
Ultima Thule isn't changing its brightness at all. New Horizons has been watching Ultima Thule for three months and hasn't spotted any brightness change, which is really odd. Ultima Thule is definitely not spherical -- astronomers determined that a year ago -- so why doesn't its brightness change?
One theory is that the New Horizon's probe is perfectly aligned with the asteroid's axis of rotation, so it's only seeing Ultima Thule's north (or south) pole. Another is that the asteroid is surrounded by dust clouds that "even out" its light curve. But that usually only happens when asteroids are near the sun and heating up, whereas Ultima Thule "is cold and dark and shouldn't have any dust...."
"Fortunately, we might not have to wait long for an answer to this problem. New Horizons will fly by Ultima Thule on January 1, and should give us high-resolution photos of the entire system," the article concludes. "With any luck, those photos will solve the mystery."
And Cue (Score:2)
,,,alien spaceship theories.
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"The Red Stuff", by John Wyndham.
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Re:And Cue (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And Cue (Score:5, Interesting)
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"And on far-off Earth, Dr. Carlisle Perera had as yet told no one how he had wakened from a restless sleep with the message from his subconscious still echoing in his brain: The Ramans do everything in threes."
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Morgan Freeman in 2000 said he wanted to produce it and be Cmdr. Norman, but says even after ten years no one has written a good script that matches the book.
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",,,alien spaceship theories."
Wot? Then those aliens can just fly over the beautiful wall?
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Well if you are going to go Alien, I would suggest that a field suppressing Alien transmissions to allow distinctly human social evolution could be distorting other forms of radiation. Good luck finding them in the Oort cloud, especially if the Oort cloud itself is being used to block Alien transmissions from reaching this solar system. Kind of ruin the mud monkey evolutionary show if we could just tune into their signals and well copy their technology or societal adaptations, we would hardly be us any more
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It's just the Mass Effect relay out past Pluto. Nothing to worry about, the chance of an eldritch horror from beyond the galactic rim to come bomb our planet is astronomically low.
"Something weird is going on" is good for science (Score:5, Insightful)
As the apocryphal quotation goes, "The most exciting phrase in science is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny ’."
Re:"Something weird is going on" is good for scien (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, "something weird is going on" could mean your probe will be destroyed by a cloud of pebbles. This mystery has got to be making the route planners nervous.
True, a cloud of pebbles would be an interesting find out this far, but it also means we won't know much more about it for at least another 20 years.
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What the fucking fuck.
Well, that's problematic.
I usually cycle through the two until I figure it out.
Re:"Something weird is going on" is good for scien (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well where I left experimental science in high school it was more like math, you either solved it right and got points or you did it wrong and at best got a partial score. At no point did "oh, that's funny" mean anything other than "oh my god, we'll have to do it again". Sometimes we just gave up finding the problem and invented the results we should have gotten instead. It's not until you hit the research stage that you go off the rails and start looking at questions where the answers aren't already preord
Not rotating ? (Score:4, Interesting)
But it is a bit far out to be gravitationally locked to the sun.
It can't be covered by an ocean as it is not perfectly round, so there would be islands/continents that would have a different albedo. What would be liquid that far out (ie cold) ?
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Re:Not rotating ? (Score:4, Interesting)
H2, He (miscible above 3.x K, IIRC), Ne. Nitrogen is close to it's triple point on Pluto, so it can slip in and out of fluidity.
Re:Not rotating ? (Score:4, Interesting)
The moon isn't perfectly tidally locked to the Earth, see Lunar Libration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Therefore it does have a light curve.
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Forgot the direct link to the GIF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Its rotation period matches the orbit, so it is tidally locked. Libration is due to other factors, mainly the fact that the orbit isn't perfectly circular.
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True, I wanted to prove it does have alight curve even if tidally locked.
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It seems highly unlikely that anything out there is tidally locked to New Horizons.
Being locked to the sun would suffice, but it's way too far away for that.
Pluto and Charon are tidally locked to each other, but of course they both rotate relative to New Horizons.
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Even if it was locked to the sun, how likely is it that the probe always keeps directly between the sun & the asteroid? Or at least always keeps the same angle to it?
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At the distance of New Horizons, if something was tidally locked to the sun it would rotate once per orbital period... once every couple centuries. So too slow for us to detect with a light curve.
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My guess is that at this distance it’s going to be a featureless ballbearing of ice. If so, then whatever rotation it may have is moot.
The most obvious? (Score:2)
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Or they left the lens cap on.
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It's not my turn. I went last time!
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Or they left the lens cap on.
In that case, who exactly would have put the lens cap back on after Pluto?
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You solved it! The Thulians built a wall around their world to keep nosy probes out. After all, earth doesn't send their best.
The aliens built a wall around it, to keep us out. (Score:2)
It's a Steel Barrier , not an Iron Curtain.
Really.
Ask the flat earthers (Score:1)
God continuously invents science (Score:2)
God continuously invents science
End of good quality simulation? (Score:2)
Maybe the virtual world where we live can only maintain a logically consistent simulation when the observer is "inside" the "solar system"?
If something goes "physically out", then empirical and sensory experience is reduced in quality?
Maybe the end game scenario is when we collectively conclude we are in a simulation? Maybe we are almost winning...
Its alien (Score:2)
Simple, an alien spacecraft, like the Oumuomua
If its not rotating (Score:2)
Possibly because its a binary pair? (Score:2)
We have information suggesting that it may be a binary contact pair, could it be tidally locked to the sun and thus have no light curve? Another possibility is that being out so far with so little gravitational interference maybe it is encased in a relatively uniform "snowdrift" of ice and dirt. Either way we should know in a week or so, hopefully it will be a heck of a show no matter what.
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No, it's too far away from the sun for it to have tidal effects that could lock it.Tidal effects come from the objects having a reasonable size compared to the distance between them - and the difference between it and the sun is huge.
Obviously (Score:2)
I Thought (Score:1)
I thought that one of the attractions of visiting these far-away Kuiper Belt objects, was that they were "pristine", unaffected by collisions or the heat of the sun. And there is a general belief that such objects may have a lot of organic compounds in their makeup, with the result that they may be very dark and have little reflectivity.
If the albedo is low enough, it may simply reflect too little light to detect a decent light curve. Regardless of it's shape, orientation or spin.