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Pluto is Much Colder Than Expected
IZ Reloaded writes "Any would be travellers to Pluto should bring extra winter gear. The new temperature on Pluto according to scientists is 43 degrees Kelvin. That's 10 degrees Kelvin colder than expected. From CNN: "Astronomers think Pluto's colder than expected temperature reading involves interactions between nitrogen ice on the planet's surface and the nitrogen gas that makes up its atmosphere...Pluto is a dynamic example of what we might call an anti-greenhouse effect...""
While scientificaly intresting, I don't think 10k really makes much of a diffrence for humans at that temprature.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Pluto is Much Cooler Than Expected
First time they used an oral thermometer, the second time a rectal one.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
The new temperature on Pluto according to scientists is 43 degrees Kelvin.
That's nothing, my ex girlfriend easily was the coldest object in our solar system. She had to be way colder than that.
Could I be the first to point out that it's just 10 Kelvin? no degrees here
.. scientists are working on developing a new, heavier polluting, SUV to reverse the anti-greenhouse effect on Pluto.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
Does this mean that Hell froze over on Pluto?
= -382.27 degrees Fahrenheit
= -230.15 degrees Celsius
= really fucking cold outside.
it's just the sort of place you'd need to run a few Pentium Extreme Edition systems.
But seriously, while researchers try to find exotic materials that exhibit room-temperature superconductivity, you could take more common materials and run them at insanely fast speeds out there. Of course, it would take a while to upload your code and data and download any processing results.......
Maybe the dark side of Mercury would be more feasible.
-- *My* journal is more interesting than *yours*...
Try 5,906,376,272 km away from the sun!
Of course, Goofy sucks.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
so it says that Charon, Pluto's moon, is warmer than the planet. Since Charon is almost as big as Pluto, I am sure this new tidbit will add more to the deabte concerning what relation the two celestial bodies have with each other and how they came to be paired.
Is 10K really all that significant? When you get down that low, you'd better be damn sure that your equipment is resistant to much lower temperatures anyway. Imagine Pluto with a wind chill...
I am scientifically inaccurate.
I'm sure some newspaper will soon start running headlines about how Pluto is "23% colder than anticipated." In the real world, 10 K isn't that much, although it would be nice to know why our estimates are off. For reference, water freezes at 273.15 K, and the deepest darkest nook of outer space registers about 2.7 K, thanks to some background microwave radiation.
Since this is Slashdot and pedantry rules - it is 43 Kelvin, not 43 degrees Kelvin.
Should be 43 kelvins or 43 K.
Over the jagged peaks of Thok they sweep,
Heedless of all the cries I make,
And down the nether pits to that foul lake
Where the puffed shoggoths splash in doubtful sleep
At forty-three [not fifty-three] Kelvin.
-- Sonnet XX, "Night Gaunts" in Fungi from Yuggoth, 1929-30
At last, we finally know how we can counter global warming!
43 Kelvins agree: Pluto is very cold
> Pluto is a dynamic example of what we might call an anti-greenhouse effect...
So does that mean scientists will continue to change what we can expect from Pluto? One decade they say it will get warmer, the next decade cooler?
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
My P4 would fix that in about 10 mins.
Silence is golden... and duct tape is silver.
That's actually about the funniest thing I've read on this article.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
read cryptonomicon a couple times have we? if it's nota dummy or a simple copy paste job, it's a wwii military cipher utilized from a very long novel. the first two are the keys. but it's still stupid.
Pluto just dumped Daisy via SMS.
Read my blog: HansMast.com
Just like my **** on a Friday night. Oh wait, that is to be expected isn't it.
Scientists were correct about the humidity. Still zero!
I hearby award you the pedantic nerd award of the day. Thanks for clearing up all the confusion that we all had with kelvin vs kelvins.
I think you've missed the point of the article. How it's "sensationalist" I can't understand at all. The point of the article was that astronomers have found something interesting. A planet that cools itself via "perspiration". Pretty neat if you ask me.
AccountKiller
Could I be the first to point out that Celsius is not a degree either. (Centigrade is though.)
So -230.15 Celsius is really f****** cold.
...if they'd discovered Pluto was much warmer than expected.
It's not so much the cold as it is the humidity.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
10 kelvin "isn't that much?" It's the difference between wearing jeans and a jacked or shorts and a t-shirt. It's a difference of 18 degrees Farenheit/Rankine.
Heinlein's classic Have Space Suit, will Travel (which I will now call HSSWT) is one of Heinlein's last jouvenille novels to have its science become dated. The other novels had such quaint things as canals and martians on Mars, or a 200 where people had the ability to make synthetic gold, yet people still had to talk to a live bank teller to withdrawl money. HSSWT, until reasonably recently, had no such quaintness to it. However, (minor spoilers follow) there is a scene in the book where the hero has to go to Pluto. In the book, Pluto has an Earth-like gravity--however, Pluto is much smaller than we thought when Heinlein wrote this book; Pluto's gravitation force is only 6% (a little over 1/20th) of Earth's gravity.
He was right about one thing though: It is very cold on Pluto.
So if the high-nitrogren content in Pluto's atmosphere causes this, would not a slight increase in the nitrogen content (say from the current 78% up to 79-80%) reverse any 'global warming' here on earth? I wonder if any research has been attempted on this...
I guess there is no need for a water cooled XBox 360 there...
Some English speaking persons have strange asumptions by way of a grammar :-)
While the "degree" shouldn't be paired with Kelvin indeed, it is most definitely still a noun.
"Degree Celsius" is simply a group of nouns, just like both words in "Ford Mustang" are.
huh?
Mickey stole his blanket.
so we're back to calling Pluto a planet again?
Interestingly your idea to run computers / superconductors in really cold environments might run into problems. While it is really cold in Space there is also a lack of a thermally conductive medium. That means, an object that generates heat in space will continue to heat up since the heat has nowhere to dissipate to! So, in order to take advantage of the extreme cold one would have to find a way to transfer the heat into the environment. Matthew Wong
Of most importance: "The finding could apply to other planets in the solar system which have condensable atmospheres like Mars." IOW, it's another little piece in our understanding of the overall solar jigsaw puzzle.
Is this from the first or second season?
I was referring to the root post as sensational, not the article.
I just re-read the article summary and I still don't see how anyone could think it's sensational. Much colder is a matter of perspective. It's colder than experimental error and what theory (based on reflectivity and light levels) can account for. That's enough to warrant some serious interest. Hell, when they first discovered high-temperature superconductors it was at 77K. It's all a matter of perspective and context. No one but a solid state physicist studying superconductivity would consider 77K to be "high temperature".
AccountKiller
Now it will be so much easier to make a cold fusion reactor.
Microsoft has already launched a probe to harness the power of Pluto to cool the Xbox 360.
The White House, misreading the term "global warming", immediately denied that Pluto exists. After reading the article they retracted the statement and issued another, stating that they will investigate Pluto's "anti-warmification properties".
An investigation has been opened into just who Kelvin is, and why he's allowed to practice science without a degree.
My script don't crash! She crashes, you crashed her!
In addition, since we're being informative, it should be noted that the use of the words "degrees" is incorrect.
Pluto's temperature is 43 kelvins, 10 kelvins cooler than expected.
Mmkay?
Dr.: "Mr. Goatse, I clearly warned you NOT to perform a bowel movement outdoors on this planet."
Table-ized A.I.
The correct use is "43 kelvins." Unlike degrees Celsius or degrees Fahrenheit (both adjectives), it is a noun, and the correct pluralization is kelvins.
In other news, anal-retentive is hyphenated when it modifies a noun?
The mistakes of a clever man are equal to the mistakes of a thousand fools.
anti-greenhouse effect? Shouldn't that be called the whitehouse effect :)
This one is seen all the time. Analysis of user agents and IP addresses would be interesting. I wonder if I could attract the (presumed) robot by mirroring the posts. Might be a good way to set up a honeypot.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
How did you know?
*yanks frozen banana from Meanus*
Awwww shit, here come the repo men..
the Plutonian terrorists are stealing our colding!
The icehouse effect.
The process by which an atmosphere cools a planet.
Thank you. Thank you.
Attribute this to JMR if you must.
On the other hand the thin nitrogen atmosphere on low gravity Pluto might cause each pin of the cpu to sprout multiple immense tornadoes in all directions, whirling across the entire hemisphere in an attempt to extract the heat which will in fact warm up the entire planet and possibly volatilize what you are standing on. On the other hand if you can bury the heat sink in solid ground you may be okay..
I mean, you'd be emotionally distant too if your master was never home, always away lobbying congress for copyright extensions.
I didn't really have Pluto on my "must visit" list anyway but with that announcement it's certainly never going to be on it.
Damn the Plutorians and their cold world.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
What "reverse-greenhouse" effect? This is a simple refrigeration cycle (pluto is like the "freon" cooling the sun).
Pluto's Summer: In a refrigeration cycle, the liquid freon (etc) absorbs heat and becomes a liquid/gas mixture. The liquid/gas mixture can absorb heat without raising it's temperature. Similarly, Pluto absorbs heat during its summer without increasing surface temperature (due to sublimation cooling).
Pluto's Winter: In the next step the liquid/gas is compressed to liquid again (one phase) and is allowed to radiate heat to the environment. Pluto's atmosphere freezes solid, so any radiation emitted from Pluto's surface cannot be absorbed by its atmosphere, but is lost to space, resulting in an overall cooling effect.
I would expect astrophysicists understand refrigeration better than I do, so I wonder what really had them stumped.
Be heard || Be herd
Man, is logic that is colder, it's January! What would you expect?
Come back in summer.
--
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Good thing I saw as I was leaving on my vacation to Pluto; I hadn't packed any winter clothing. Thanks Slashdot!
One day two Girton girls are on his bus and one remarks his age and physique, turns to the other and murmurs "Super conductor". To which the other replies "Three degrees Kelvin."
As a result of the parent post, this joke is now officially demolished.
Pining for the fjords
Guess it is perfect HQ for a cybernetic overlord, the whole planet could be used as a liquid nitrogen cooler :)
No overheating for sure.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
It's no fun if you have to overthink it.
But supposing one actually wanted to design a computer system that could operate on the surface of Pluto, I'm sure the heatsink design wouldn't be the worst problem. Just mount the CPU so that the heat-spreader is mated to the case, and sit the case on the planet surface. I don't know the thermal conductivity of frozen solid nitrogen, but I have a feeling it will be adequate. The heat of vaporization will take care of the rest.
-- *My* journal is more interesting than *yours*...
The correct name for the SI unit I think you are referring to is "degree Celcius" not "Degree Centigrade"
Furthermore, kelvin does not have an uppercase "K"
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
No science degree? What are you talking about, Kelvin has at least 43.
...for your vodka drink !
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Famous last words...
Actually, metric units often aren't pluralized at all; so, "43 kelvin" and "43 kelvins" are both fine, with the former probably being more common.
That's something to applaud. Sure, it might not be that different - 23% colder than "really fucking cold" is also "really fucking cold" - but it would be accurate.
I am trolling
I don't think that would be that huge a differance, as it's incredibly cold anyway. Still interesting, though.
Are you kidding? 10K isn't a lot at Earth temperatures. But it's a lot when you're that close to absolute zero. That "23%" (should be less somewhat less than 20%) is the way to think about it. It's analogous to the difference between 0 C and roughly -50 C. Namely, you need a substantial effect or error to be off by that much in temperature.
There's no such thing as "degrees Kelvin." It should be "10 Kelvin," not "10 degrees Kelvin." Kelvin is the unit, not degrees. This is different than using Fahrenheit or Celcius scales.
More like 40 years. It was discovered right about the time Larry Niven submitted the story "The Coldest Place", which relied on Mercury having a dark side for its premise. The magazine published his story anyway.
"If it's real, then it gets more interesting the closer you examine it. If it's not real, just the opposite is true." -
Now you will be able to get those super-high frame rates you always wanted.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
But, the article does not say if the ski lifts are already open yet? ...leaving next week for snow vacation, the Alps or Pluto, that's the question
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
You know, the one that says that when an elderly, distinguished scientist says that something is impossible, he is almost always wrong?
Pining for the fjords
Repeat after me - there are no degrees kelvin, only Kelvin. Degrees centigrade and farenheit yes, Kelvin no.
Hundreds of PC overclocking enthusiasts are looking into ways to get broadband on Pluto to support them moving there.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
And remind Hobbes to bring his scarf.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
I've survived in Minnesota. How bad could Pluto be?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
"In the real world, 10 K isn't that much, although it would be nice to know why our estimates are off."
Here's the original press release: http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/press/pr0601.html
The energy is lost when liquid nitrogen evaporates. I don't think the scientists were too surprised.
The achievment is that they reached better resolution than what was previously possible at that wavelength, not the scientific results themselves. Though I guess it does tell us something about Pluto's atmosphere.
NASA seek Geordie crew for first manned flight to Pluto. (T-shirts will be provided)
I suppose some English Grammars will call it that. That is very irritating to the rest of mankind (in the Indo-European languages).
... the way we learned English Grammar at school was more aligned with the German/Latin versions but since then I've found the term "adjective" often used in strange cases in English Grammars ...
I guess the confusion started when English lost the declinations of nouns and adjectives. Starting with the fact that "Celsius" is a proper noun, then when it is used as the qualifying part of a noun group, as in "degree Celsius", one might be tempted to call it a "proper adjective" in the sense that it is placed next to the noun that it qualifies ("degree").
That is, in the original sense of the latin word "adicio".
However, in its original grammatical function, "Celsius" is always a noun, in this case used in a noun group to qualify another noun. Calling that an "adjective" puts it (at least in the mind set of e.g. German speaking people) in a different category of word where it doesn't belong.
Let's take another example, the noun "space":
Raumgleiter = space shuttle
Raum-Zeit-Kontinuum = space time continuum
räumliches Sehen = spatial (i.e. stereoscopic) vision
Do you call "space" a proper adjective there, too?
I'm just curious
On the plus side, it would be easier to achieve cold fusion on pluto than previously thought :)
They are really large alien space craft. Pluto is powered down while Charon is still running.
Freedom: "I won't!"
In other other news, a question mark should only be used at the end of a question?
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
Right....it's global cooling blah blah blah "ice age is coming" blah blah blah ...then in about 20 years astronomers will do a 180 and suddenly declare that Pluto is on the brink of runaway warming that will somehow (vague hand-waving here) destroy everything.
Oh, and it's Bush's fault.
-Styopa
Anti-greenhouse effect?
It's too early to tell! You haven't been examining Pluto long enough! There's no proof that this cold is related to Plutinites releasing anti-CFCs and not some sort of natural cycle! Blame the Sun's power output!
It was covered by CNN. BBC reports the temperature on Pluto as 229 degrees (on the kids info pages). Weather.com has no listings for pluto. It must have been a very slow news day for CNN.
Still not as cold as my Ex. But almost.
MadOgre.com
the occupant of the office downstairs, and the one next to me, and the one down the hall had to check why i was laughing so loudly. and then they asked why i was on slashdot and not out selling... gah.
What about Mickey?
Let's squeeze more Mhz out of these CPU and GPU cores, and even the stock fan should suffice :-)
have you been defaced today?
They'd be Kelvin Klein jeans, I assume...
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
in soviet france uranus is colder than pluto.
there now... haha ha @-)
This only proves that global warming is real, and is caused by SUV's!
An intresting book: Camelot 30K
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH
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So, how much is 10 Kelvins in Centigrade?
I can never remember the conversion constant. Damned scientists and their ridiculous units.
Wait, you'd wear shorts and a t-shirt at 53 kelvin?
That's totally sweater weather; you're crazy!
Never used a dictionary, eh?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Mickey Mouse. That's who he's referring.
No, it's not that big of a difference. *Especially* at that
temperature. You are inferring things from the arbitrary units
we have chosen to repressent temperature in. In fact, a linear
temperature scale is sub-optimal because among other things it
introduces the falsehood of an absolute zero. An exponential
scale would avoid this. What you are really wanting to consider
is the difference in heat (heat is energy but too often confused
with temeperature).
Were that I say, pancakes?
There is an absolute zero. Calling it a "falsehood" ignores more than a century of empirical evidence to the contrary. Even if we use a logrithmic scale (not an exponential scale), we still end up with the prior obervation that I noted before. A 10 K change at 50 k is roughly equivalent to 50 K at standard temperature. They span roughly the same amount under a logrithmic scale.
It is a falsehood, having a zero on the scale implies that it is acheivable. However it is not, it would take inifinite energy to
extract the last vestiges of heat in a very cold system.
Were that I say, pancakes?
Ever been to Minnesota?
Women- the final frontier...
. . . how cold is uranus?
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Get it? Your anus?
- He doesn't get it, Ty.
Get it? Your anus?
- He doesn't get it!
http://undecidedgames.blogspot.com
Ok, I think I see the merit of your side. However, I should point out that we routinely do this sort of thing. For example, we weigh people in kilograms. You could argue that the scale includes all real numbers and hence "implies" that we can have people who weigh 10^6 kilograms or -100 kilograms, either which is physically impossible though for different reasons.
The Kelvin scale is nice for a couple of reasons. First, it tends to be proportional to the random component of the kinetic energy of the material. Second, there is a nice relationship between temperature and entropy that's better expressed in terms of temperature than in terms of log temperature.
Exactly. The first thing is what I said Re: heat. As for the second, yes... thermo would be even more unbearable with a non-linear temperature system.
:-P
PS> Technically people weigh Newtons and are massed in kilograms
Were that I say, pancakes?
I am suitably humbled, sir. :)