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Quaoar Showing Evidence of Volcanic Activity

Posted by michael on from the long-way-out dept.

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."

3 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Someone needs to say something by CheshireCatCO · · 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.

    1. It's not. Pluto has evidence for geological activity.
    2. So do a lot of other outer solar system objects, although you seem to mean "Kuiper Belt Objects" in this case. (They're not the same thing. The "outer solar system" is usually taken to mean the giant planets and outward.) Even then, you almost have to count Neptune's giant moon Triton on the list, which almost certainly has geological activity.
    3. Sedna is smaller than Quaoar. So it's less likely to have geological activity. Also, it's farther away thatn Quaoar, so it's really tough getting a spectrum.
  2. More Kuiper Belt Information Here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Website by the leader of the study: http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/faculty/jewitt/kb.html

  3. Re:a bit of wishful thinking... by CheshireCatCO · · Score: 2, Informative

    a) Having taught from that book, I can tell you right now that Hartmann is not an introductory level text. So please don't try to insult me.

    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 them in the same category. There is certainly a varaition in the makeup of comets, but comets and asteroids have very different histories and compositions. Having formed inside of the frost-line, asteroids are widely-agreed to be (pretty much by defintion) volatile-poor. Outgassing would not be expected under those conditions as a consequence.

    A little research would have told you this. (Google is your friend, here.) The IAU, for example, codifies the distinction in the very handling and naming of newly discovered bodies.

    In any case, all of this is a tangent. You are suggesting that Sedna could be sublimating when its maximum temperature from solar insolation would be about 50 K. That's singularly unlikely.