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

    Large collisions would be pretty rare in the Kuiper Belt. There just isn't enough stuff around. Worse, they occur at low speeds. So you wouldn't expect to generate a lot of melting that way. It's possible, of course. But it's an eyebrow-raiser.

    "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.)

  3. 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