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...""

Comments

hmm

[autopr0n]

While scientificaly intresting, I don't think 10k really makes much of a diffrence for humans at that temprature.

Re:hmm

[Sparr0]

You would be surprised. I think it means ~33% more insulation required on any device that needs to stay heated to operate there.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Newsflash: Room-temperature Superconductor developed For usage on Pluto!

Re:hmm

[Vellmont]

I don't understand why it would require so much more insulation. Isn't heat transfer proportional to the difference in temperature of each side? So if you wanted to maintain your equipment at 0c, that's 273K-43K = 230 vs 273K-53K= 220. The heat transfer of the material is a constant, so 230/220 = 1.045, so about 4.5% thicker insulation.

Re:hmm

[Ruff_ilb]

What devices would need to stay heated?

Afaik, electronics wouldn't - they'd just run faster in the cold.

And I'm willing to bet that by the time we're ready to send people to pluto, we'll laugh at a toasty 43k.

Re:hmm

[$RANDOMLUSER]

> ...I don't think 10k really makes much of a diffrence for humans...

It would if it was Uranus.

Re:hmm

[blincoln]

What devices would need to stay heated?

Afaik, electronics wouldn't - they'd just run faster in the cold.

My cellphone and the remote control for my car would like to have a word with you about that, but they haven't really been themselves since they spent the night with me in a tiny emergency snow cave.

Re:hmm

[Ruff_ilb]

Perhaps that's due to a problem with the battery, or something...

My point is that we're perfectly capable of making electronics that run quite well in the sub-freezing cold.

Re:hmm

[Vellmont]

Batteries don't tend to work very well at all at 43K. Since batteries are chemical devices the chemical reactions happen MUCH slower (if at all) at such a low temperature.

I don't know the effects of cold on normal solid state electronics, but I wouldn't have a problem believing that some components aren't going to work normally at 43K. It's not as if the parts manufacturer tests them at these extreme temperatures.

Re:hmm

[Belseth]

It's interesting because it's an effect they haven't seen before. An atmosphere actually helping to cool a planet is something new and pretty amazing. It seems to act like a giant evaporative cooler. The more that's understood about the physics of known planets the more accurate the information will be that can be gleaned from distant planets. Ten degrees may not seem like much but it's an important piece of the overall puzzle. It also means that Pluto is a lot more active and more interesting than people have thought.

Re:hmm

[jdbartlett]

I just love the headline. Tourists dissappointed. Pluto falls short of vacationer's expectations.

Man on Pluto: "It's cold."

"It's not what we expected," said Mrs. White, mother of four, "We thought it'd be much milder than this. We haven't been able to go out all holiday and the kids have been bored. It was either this or Disney and the kids were all excited to get to see Pluto. We didn't think it'd be like this."

Mr. White says he intends to pursue compensation from NASA and other astronomic research organizations for misrepresenting Pluto in tourist information.

"It's flagrant false advertising," said Mr. White, father of three.

Re:hmm

[utnow]

cooler temperatures will only improve performance in solid state electronics for so long... at some point they will actually begin to malfunction as a result of the extreme cold.

http://www.octools.com/ramil/newscientist/faster.h tm

a segment from the bottom...

everything had frozen solid and the thermometer registered -150 C. Success. Then the monitor started to flash strange images. Pressing keys on the keyboard produced random characters on the screen. "In other words," Tranquilino says, "the motherboard was stuffed."

Regardless of what actual mechanism caused the thing to fail, the cold temperature was the factor that drove it, making this a good example of a device failing in extremely cold conditions.

Re:hmm

[rocket jockey]

That is just one of the reasons you don't use batteries far from the sun. RTG's generate a constant source of heat and electricity for years due to radioactice decay. You could up the anti with a full scale nuclear reactor but nasa would be hard pressed to sneak that out of the gravity well. The only other option is to beam energy there but that is a problem becuase it's hard the amim the attena. Nuclear power is really the only way to go for deep space travle.

Re:hmm

[Vellmont]

Well, from what I know the reason that RTG generators are used is because of the extremely low light levels so far from the sun, not cold. The Mars rovers for instance use solar panels with batteries and heaters. I'd bet batteries+solar panel+heaters is a LOT cheaper than an RTG.

But you're right, on a mission to pluto they'd have to use an RTG for power, so chemical batteries wouldn't be needed. I hadn't thought of the low light levels. But, the original point is that a heat source is important because electronics don't work the same at such extremely low temperatures.

Re:hmm

[Tablizer]

While scientificaly intresting, I don't think 10k really makes much of a diffrence for humans at that temprature.

It may make the difference of whether your nuts fall off first or your brain freezes into an ice-rock first.

Re:hmm

[Amadio]

Actually, the electronics needs to work also during the trip, where the temperature is about 2.7 K.
For the kind of electronics that goes to space, low temperature actually helps.

Re:hmm

[drgonzo59]

Try running your computer (monitor and everything) at 10 K degrees, see how fast it runs ;)

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

If the heat flow is radiation dominated, as is often the case when a system is vacuum isolated to minimize thermal conduction, it'll go like T^4 due to the Stefan-Boltzmann law.

Re:hmm

[Monsieur_F]

I think we need more information about this family here : is Mr White Mrs White's husband ? Why is he only the father of three while his wife is mother of four ? Perhaps Mrs White had one child from someone else, for instance in a previous marriage ?

I am all confused about all this. Please give us details !

Re:hmm

[gauge boson]

Actually, the electronics needs to work also during the trip, where the temperature is about 2.7 K.

Not really. The temperature of the heliosphere is actually rather high -- don't remember exactly offhand, but it's higher than the interstellar medium, which is somewhere around 7000K (give or take a couple thousand Kelvins). It's just that it stores almost no heat, since there's so little matter. (This is slightly sloppy wording, but close enough.) The upshot is that there is almost no heat conduction in either direction and almost all heat transfer occurs by blackbody radiation, which is amazingly inefficient. Even though Pluto doesn't have an atmosphere, touching the surface changes this entirely by providing a material to transfer heat to -- that's why a probe landing on Pluto would need a lot of insulation that a non-landing probe (e.g., V'ger) wouldn't.

Re:hmm

[Amadio]

The particles in the ISM follow the Mazwell-Boltzmann distribution of velocities with a temperature
of actually 2.725 K. Read here what the guys who measured it have to say (WMAP experiment).

Re:hmm

[Vellmont]

Thanks. It's easy to forget the transfer of temperature via radiation rather than conduction.

Re:hmm

[LordSnooty]

"It was either this or Disney and the kids were all excited to get to see Pluto."

Well, that's her own fault, if she can't tell the difference between Pluto the planet and Pluto the floppy-eared brown dog.

Re:hmm

[jacksonj04]

Only if there's something externally providing power. Batteries (which spacecraft usually need) really dislike extreme cold.

Re:hmm

[gauge boson]

That's not the temperature of the interstellar medium, it's the temperature of the cosmic background radiation -- they are completely different. I can see where the confusion could come from, though. Short version:

• Cosmic Microwave Background: The residual heat of the big bang, redshifted (cooled) by ~13 billion years of expansion. This temperature is given in terms of the Stefan-Boltzmann relation (blackbody temperature), and basically represents the average temperature of the whole universe, including the vast, cold, empty intergalactic regions.
• Interstellar Medium: A very diffuse (though still dense compared to the intergalactic regions) cloud of ionized gas filling the whole galaxy. These ionized particles move around very quickly, i.e., they're very hot (Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution). 7000K +/- 2000K according to this synopsis, at least for regions near the heliosphere.
• Heliosphere: The gaseous bubble surrounding the sun out to about 100AU (Voyager 1 hit the termination shock where it meets the ISM at 94AU). It's hotter and denser than the interstellar medium, and it's where any space probe we launch would be travelling. Of course, since there is so little gas in even the heliosphere (its pressure would be considered a hard vacuum on Earth), these temperatures have very little effect on any spacecraft.

Re:hmm

[m50d]

You could up the anti

Become more opposed?

Re:hmm

[gauge boson]

Actually, I should clarify the CMB part, since I got a little sloppy in the wording (need sleep). It's not the average temperature of all matter in the universe, but closer to the temperature of space itself. More exactly, CMB photons permeate all space (unless shielded from them) and therefore roughly give even 'empty' space a temperature of ~2.7K. i.e., a blackbody in otherwise empty space shielded from other light sources would eventually heat or cool to ~2.7K.

Bah. I should just leave well enough alone.

Re:hmm

[khallow]

No it doesn't. If the device is intended to operate at 43 K, then the temperature is perfect and no insulation is needed.

Re:hmm

[khallow]

No it won't. A lot of layers effectively reduces it to the convection model.

Re:hmm

[khallow]

The Mars rovers use multiple radioactive sources for heating.

Second, a heat source is needed to provide power for computations not heat. Electronics in general *works better* at low temperatures.

Re:hmm

[Paradise Pete]

I upped my anti once and my uncle beat the snot out of me.

Re:hmm

[tzanger]

Afaik, electronics wouldn't - they'd just run faster in the cold.

Incorrect. I am a field applications engineer for an industrial power electronics manufacturer (no I'm not going to try and create an acronym for that).

Electronic devices tend to take more power to do the work designed to do. Thyristors in particular are harder to "fire" in extreme cold, requiring much heavier driver circuitry and higher current. The cold is welcome, though -- a lower ambient means that heatsinks work better and that you can get away with smaller devices to carry the same amount of current so long as your ambient stays cold. Also the entire field of superconductivity revolves around cooler temperatures, so the actual transfer of electrical power could be a lot more efficient on a cold planet. :-)

Re:hmm

[Bertie]

Hmm. Yeah. I was in Tallinn, Estonia in March. It was minus Idunnohowmany with a howling wind blowing off the (frozen solid) Baltic. I took my phone out of my pocket to take a snapshot with it and within about a minute it had died of cold. It was never quite the same again, and a few weeks later it packed in altogether.

Somehow I don't imagine you get these problems with Nokias, given that Helsinki's a short helicopter trip across the water.

Re:hmm

[grqb]

I'm sure most batteries will fail well above 43K...I'd bet you'd have a hard time finding a battery that works well at temperatures as high as 220K (-53C).

Re:hmm

[Amadio]

Which means that the temperature to which they are in equilibrium is 2.7 K, as I said before. This makes the trip phase colder than when at Pluto's surface, the only thing I wanted to say in the first post. The Spitzer satellite, for example, which is not that far away, is kept at much lower temperatures than 43 K.
http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_classroo m/ask_astronomer/video/transcripts/2003-001.pdf
Why make confusion with heliosphere if you yourself admitted it doesn't matter?

Re:hmm

[Bega]

10k what? 10,000 doesn't matter, that's true. 10K on the other hand...

Re:hmm

[sdpuppy]

Makes sense - at even lower temps - in dewars that hold liquid Helium (which must remain below 4 K - 1 degree above deep deep space - to stay liquid), there are bunches of foil sheets between chambers for insulation. Otherwise if it did go as T^4, the dewars would probably horrendously large.

Re:hmm

[PatrickThomson]

Why would electronics need to be at 0c? other than the electrical properties of silicon, I can't see a reason to keep the temperature above ambient at all, and you have to admit it'd be handy to be able to use superconductors.

Re:hmm

[sdpuppy]

Yeah, the power source is somewhat important.

Batteries run on chemical reactions, which are dependent on temperature.
Power source would have to be specially designed to work at those temps

another note to slash dotters waiting on the corner with their PC for the next bus to Pluto::

All because you hear of supercomputers running at low - K temps doesn't mean you can take you trusty old PC, dunk it in liquid nitrogen (at 77K & a few $ per liter) or if you have $ to burn, dunk the shebang in liquid Helium (at 4K & about $10/liter) and expect it to work, even if you remove the batteries.

Other problems with electronics at extreme temperatures:

• frozen battery :-)
• Some components use liquids/pastes e.g.: electrolytic caps - probably will freeze & damage internals
• Semiconductors have to be designed to operate at these low temps - other effects (like quantum stuff) might dominate and the semi will do things that the designers didn't expect
• Above - timing may change
• Do I dare pun: cold solder joint?

  Oblig: "10 K? Ha! I for one welcome our new frosty overlords!
  Oblig2: "On Pluto, the COLD get YOU!" :-)

Re:hmm

[ac3boy]

"220, 221...Whatever it takes."

Re:hmm

[sdpuppy]

>and almost all heat transfer occurs by blackbody radiation, which is amazingly inefficient.

Oh my goodness - did I waste money buying those Low-E windows with the Titanium thin layer coating?

(The one where the guys demos with a heat lamp -
"feel the heat go through with normal double pane"
then produces double pane with fiberglass insulation stuffed inside - same thing
then their low E glass - only a little gets through)

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Try "up the ante" (which is a card game expression, usually poker).

There's just so much fun when talking about nuclear spacecraft, the usual objections to launching said nuclear spacecraft, and then talking about "upping the anti".

As if those eco-freaks really needed to be riled up any more.

Re:hmm

[WuphonsReach]

Ever read Forever War?

Interesting bit in there when the troops are training on the surface of Pluto. The author deals with issues such as heat conduction, sudden expansion of frozen surfaces, etc.

Re:hmm

[mOdQuArK!]

I think that any spacecraft capable of operating at Pluto's orbit is probably going to use an RTG (radiation thermal generator) for power supply (like the Voyagers did). I don't think solar panels will gather enough energy at that distance to power anything significant (unless the panels were absolutely humongous). Nuclear radiation probably doesn't care too much about what the ambient temperature is.

Re:hmm

[genner]

Never played poker eh?

Re:hmm

[swv3752]

Was it the cold or was it the flourinert freezing solid and the process of freezing shift some components on the mobo? I think the latter is more likely.

Re:hmm

[gauge boson]

Why make confusion with heliosphere if you yourself admitted it doesn't matter?

Well, initially I was simply trying to clarify the misconception that space near Earth is at a low temperature -- it isn't, any more than it's completely empty. And yes, the effective equilibrium temperature* would be a little above the CMB temperature, but only if you ignore sunlight (rather important, since that can make the difference between cooling to near CMB temperature and heating to hundreds of kelvins) and besides, it would take a very long time to reach equilibrium. The thread began with the need for insulation, but heat transfer (except for a negligible amount due to particle collissions) will not occur by conduction. Hence, no need for lots of insulation. The only way for a spacecraft to give up significant amounts of heat is by radiating it as light. Once on Pluto, or any other surface, however, the temperature makes a big difference since conduction is orders of magnitude more efficient at transfering heat than blackbody radiation.

*Technically, by the Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics, two bodies are in equilibrium if and only if they are at the same temperature, so equilibrium would be at the heliosphere temperature. As a practical matter, though, the heliosphere transfers so little heat that even blackbody radiation outpaces it.

Re:hmm

[gauge boson]

Oh my goodness - did I waste money buying those Low-E windows with the Titanium thin layer coating?

Probably not. Consider that the sunlight you'd be shielding against has a blackbody temperature of around 6000K, and then consider how much more quickly heat would get through those windows if there was a 6000K fluid on the other side. Radiation is extremely inefficient compared to conduction or convection, but that doesn't mean it can't transfer a lot of heat in certain circumstances.

Re:hmm

[clem]

Unless, of course, that temperature is absolute zero.

Re:hmm

[mOdQuArK!]

Which is supposedly impossible due to the Uncertainty Principle (and the "virtual particle" sea), so that's not really an issue.

Besides, from what I remember (very vaguely), the background radiation permeating the universe makes even deep space at about 2deg Kelvin, so you have to go to extreme measures to try and get even close to absolute zero.

Re:hmm

[Asm-Coder]

anti-greenhouse effect...

whoever lives on pluto just got rich through their newest export, the knowlege of what causes this effect! =-)

Re:hmm

[Tmack]

As long as there is something to convect through between the layers, otherwise radiation takes over, and since that is the weakest transfer mode available, is usually the best choice for insulation (hence the vaccume thermos). But, if the layers are touching, conduction happens and depending on how strong the junction is and after boundary layer effects, might dominate and reduce the effectiveness as an insulator.

tm

Re:hmm

[khallow]

Heat transfer via radiation between two layers is linear when the temperature difference is small. For example, if we have N layers and each layer is temperature T_k, then the temperature change of layer k will be the heat received from radiation by the adjacent layers minus the heat it radiates to these adjacent layers. If the temperature changes between layers are small, then the heat flow is proportion to the temperature differences.

Re:hmm

[rocket jockey]

I rile up activist in my freetime.

Re:hmm

[Vellmont]

0c is just an arbitrary number that most electronics are tested to work at. Electronics don't work the same at extreme temperatures like 43k as they do at our normal earth temperatures. Voltage and resistance can vary, so the design of the electronics has to reflect the temperature it's working at. But, if you design something to work at 43K, what happens when it's near the earth and a few hundred degrees hotter? One approach to the problem is to insulate everything and have some kind of heat source that regulates the temperature. I don't know if anyone designs electronics to operate at temperature extremes of 43K to room temperature or so, but I don't think it'd be easy (or even cheap) to do so.

Re:hmm

[m50d]

Every fortnight. But there's no anti that I'm aware of.

Re:hmm

[PatrickThomson]

it wouldn't have to be 43k. Reading from some of the other posts around, people seem to think that the 10 kelvins extra is a big deal, so why not just design the equipment to run at 263 instead of 273?

Re:hmm

[rocket jockey]

Fuel cells work at better at high temperatures

Explanation for the difference

[winkydink]

First time they used an oral thermometer, the second time a rectal one.

Re:Explanation for the difference

[Hognoxious]

Could have been worse. Coud have been much worse.

Re:Explanation for the difference

[slideroll]

No, that was Uranus.

Re:Explanation for the difference

[SapphireSnowdrop]

What they really need are the quick ear check ones.

Re:Explanation for the difference

[NanoGator]

Wait, which one of those had the warm pole?

Re:Explanation for the difference

[halcyon1234]

First time they used an oral thermometer, the second time a rectal one. Nonono, you got it all wrong. They took the tempurature from the Canadian part of Pluto.

Re:Explanation for the difference

[SteveMurphy]

First time they used an oral thermometer, the second time a rectal one.

You just wanted to type the word "rectal."

Re:Explanation for the difference

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Hopefully not the same thermometer!

Re:Explanation for the difference

[gumpish]

Dear Mod,

Your mom is off-topic, bitch.

Not that cold...

[_PimpDaddy7_]

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.

Re:Not that cold...

[quokkapox]

Yes, and you appear to be the ultimate ladies' man yourself, Mr. PimpDaddy7.

Re:Not that cold...

[HermanAB]

Mick Jagger? Is that you? ("I'm so hot and she's so cold" - for those who can't get the joke.)

Re:Not that cold...

[metlin]

Heh, anyone who uses that kind of loud, obnoxious and deafening music on their website would most certainly be dumb enough to be one, alright.

Warning, people - the music on that site is just jarring and annoying.

Re:Not that cold...

[KozmoStevnNaut]

It definitely is...

But this is just comedy gold... It's just begging to be used as the world's most obnoxious forum avatar.

Re:Not that cold...

[m50d]

Your site crashes my browser (konqueror). Please fix it.

Re:Not that cold...

[Bertie]

I found her more than adequately accomodating myself.

Re:Not that cold...

[zundra]

Did you guys actually take a look at this site? He made it that obnoxious on purpose because he's making fun of "Roxy Guys" so the fact that its obnoxious is the point. By the way hilarious site dude.

Not degrees

[whmac33]

Could I be the first to point out that it's just 10 Kelvin? no degrees here

Re:Not degrees

[pranay]

For a change, the journalists got their science right. from the article:

43 Kelvin (-382 degrees Fahrenheit) instead of the expected 53 Kelvin (-364 degrees Fahrenheit)

But then, a fellow slashdotter uses degrees Kelvin and no eyebrows are raised.

Re:Not degrees

[Anonymous Coward]

To be even more pedantic than you, the difference of 10 degrees is actually correct (if they didn't write the Kelvin) because a difference of 10 Kelvin is identically a difference of 10 Degrees Centigrade.

Re:Not degrees

[Howski]

Well, technically, it's EITHER 10 degrees centigrade colder OR 10 Kelvin colder, even though 1 degree centigrade is equivalent to 1 Kelvin. As they teach in elementary school science, the answer is NOT "10" it's "10 Kelvin." If I recorded an answer - even a correct one - and didn't indicate the units, my science teacher would have written "10 what?" on my paper and marked the entire thing wrong. The unit is everything.

(Besides, the article uses only K and degrees Farenheit.)

Re:Not degrees

[Guppy06]

Actually, it's 10 kelvin. You capitalize the abbreviation K, but SI unit names are lower-case.

Re:Not degrees

[evilmonkey_666]

The only difference between Kelvin and Centigrade is the reference point of 0. 0 K is absolute zero. 0 C is the temperature that water freezes at.

A difference of 1K or 1C from any arbitrary temperature is exactly the same.

Re:Not degrees

[Anonymous Coward]

It is actually kelvins. Thanks for playing the retarded pedantry game with us today! Your prize is: a life without sex.

Re:Not degrees

[91degrees]

Any later, and the cucumber sandwiches with be mushy, and no pedant likes mushy cucumber sandwiches.

Can you clarify here? Do you mean the sandwiches will be mushy, or that the cucumbers in the sandwiches will be mushy?

Re:Not degrees

[Londonkidz]

And to think I actually got myself an account just to counter that last post.....Anyway, no it is not "kelvins". SI units do not add the s for plurals. Two metre, three kilogramme, ten kelvin.

Re:Not degrees

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Actually, you are either talking about degrees of Centigrade or degrees of Kelvin. The word "degree" can be used for the unit divisions of any temperature scale, it is not specific to neither F nor C.

Re:Not degrees

[Ctrl-Z]

Bull honkey.

A derived unit is usually singular in English, for example, the value 3 m2 K/W is usually spelled out as "three square meter kelvin per watt," and the value 3 C m2/V is usually spelled out as "three coulomb meter squared per volt." However, a "single" unit may be plural; for example, the value 5 kPa is spelled out as "five kilopascals," although "five kilopascal" is acceptable. If in such a single-unit case the number is less than one, the unit is always singular when spelled out; for example, 0.5 kPa is spelled out as "five-tenths kilopascal."

Re:Not degrees

[LainTouko]

Actually, it's 10 kelvins. Kelvins are like metres or seconds, that's the idea.

Re:Not degrees

[sdpuppy]

Yeah, my physics prof used to go around with a stick and bop us if we ever used the "D" word with the "K" word.
...and then bop us again if we forget the "D" word with the "C" or the "F" word
(two bops if you used the "F" word after the first bop)

...and no one on slahdot wonders what happened to Hobbs with all this discussion of Kelvin.....what a minute...

Re:Not degrees

[reverendG]

WTF? Offtopic? How can I be modded offtopic for making a joke about people being pedantic when they are being self-admittedly pedantic? Someone must have been a real pedant to be so on topic.

In other news ...

[slashbob22]

.. scientists are working on developing a new, heavier polluting, SUV to reverse the anti-greenhouse effect on Pluto.

Re:In other news ...

[cowboy76Spain]

Why such effort? Just send in all the SUVs we already have (and its drivers, of course :-) ).

Naturally...

[__aaclcg7560]

Does this mean that Hell froze over on Pluto?

Re:Naturally...

[quokkapox]

My NASA contact informs me that on Pluto you can download the GPL'd source to Vista, while watching streaming OGG video of Sergey and Brin torturing the baby penguins...

Re:Naturally...

[HermanAB]

Since Pluto is the God of the Nether World, this is clear proof that hell is frozen quite solid.

Re:Naturally...

[arodland]

Sergey and Brin?
Have you noticed that they're never seen in the same room together?

Re:Naturally...

[Ohreally_factor]

What are you talking about? I saw them together in Vegas. With those white tigers. Really a great show.

For the lazy

[krunoce]

43 kelvin

= -382.27 degrees Fahrenheit
= -230.15 degrees Celsius

= really fucking cold outside.

Re:For the lazy

[TykeClone]

But what about the windchill - that's what will get you!

And for those who don't live in the midwest :)

Re:For the lazy

[darkmeridian]

I kind of gathered that when the article mentioned the nitrogen ice on the planetary surface.

Re:For the lazy

[lock robster]

You forgot 77.4 Rankine

Re:For the lazy

[$RANDOMLUSER]

That's no big deal, we had methane snow here in Chicago last month.

Re:For the lazy

[doxology]

Yeah, but what's that in radians?

Re:For the lazy

[Ex-MislTech]

That's no big deal, we had methane snow here in Chicago last month.

Reeeeeeeeaaaally ?????

Methane (CH4) 16.0426 g/mole Freezing point: -182.5 C

Re:For the lazy

[qwijibo]

I'm pretty sure at -382F, we would be sufficiently protected against windchill.

Re:For the lazy

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Yes, it was really snowing methane.

Re:For the lazy

[tompaulco]

43 kelvin

= -382.27 degrees Fahrenheit
= -230.15 degrees Celsius
Or -230 degrees Celsius, or -230.16 degrees Celcius or -230.18 degrees Celcius, depending on which conversion site I want to believe.
Interesting though, that I didn't find any precisions of greater than two decimal places.

Re:For the lazy

[Ceribia]

Obviously you've never lived in Canada

Re:For the lazy

[Shimmer]

Okay, that is just plain funny.

In other words

[hyc]

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.

Re:In other words

[Celarnor]

Well, at least there's a research group out there working on it. http://www.ipnsig.org/

Re:In other words

[techno-vampire]

Maybe the dark side of Mercury would be more feasible.

What "dark side of Mercury?" It's been known for over twenty years that Mercury rotates in 2/3 of the time it takes to orbit the sun rather than having its day equal to its year. It's just that the best times to observe the planet by telescope come about 2/3 or 4/3 of an orbit apart. (Not sure which one, but in either case, the same side was always lit when we could observe it. It took doppler radar to find out what was really going on.)

Re:In other words

[Jozer99]

Actually, not true.

Very little atmosphere
+ massive heat dissipation
+ small die surface area
= Quick overheating

Re:In other words

[ottffssent]

Specifically, Mercury's day is 58.65 earth days long, while its year is 87.97 earth days long (source: NASA JPL).

From the same source, we see that Mercury's minimum temperature is about 100K (comfortably colder than liquid nitrogen). Obviously that would occur on the currently-dark side of the planet. So while there's no permanently-dark side of Mercury, there's certainly a cold dark part of mercury somewhere at any given point in time, and that coldest part is only about 50K away from Pluto's temp (presumably an average).

Moral of the story: computers wouldn't like the cold on Pluto, but they wouldn't like the 700K highs on Mercury either. Also, as a wise man once said, "It's funny. Laugh."

Anti-greenhouse effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try 5,906,376,272 km away from the sun!

Re:anti-greenhouse effect?

[leoboiko]

More catchphrases:

  - the redhouse effect (red is complementary to green)
  - the burnthouse effect (frost will "burn" plants in a greenhouse)
  - the evergreenhouse effect (it is so cold that the plants are actually frozen green forever)
  - the exgirlfriend effect (it's cold, and will never get warm; shameless plagiarizing another comment)

Ok, I suck.

weird science

[loserhead]

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.

Re:weird science

[HermanAB]

I guess this shows that we got the sexes of the two Gods the wrong way around...

Re:weird science

[bdeclerc]

Yeah, you are right. I mean, who would have figured that Pluto was male and Charon was male, while in fact... oh wait... Duh...

Re:weird science

[LMariachi]

Maybe he thought it said Charo.

Koochie koochie!

Re:weird science

[Ekevu]

Hm. That sounds almost like the gay marriage debate. They're two planets that enjoy orbiting each other! Let them be! Marriage isn't ruined!

Re:weird science

[tompaulco]

Not only that, but the same faces of Pluto and Charon are always facing each other. The same thing will happen to Earth and our moon (technically we are a binary planet pair) eventually.

So?

[millennial]

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...

Re:So?

[gbobeck]

Forget the stupid wind chill... what about the days where its damp there?

Re:So?

[millennial]

You're right. Those liquid oxygen thunderstorms can be a bitch!

Re:So?

[gbobeck]

Especially for smokers out on a smoke break...

Re:So?

[crache]

Working in Maine, in the woods, a lot of people complain about the wind chill. My boss always said the same thing when his workers tried to say it was too cold with the wind chill to work; "the equipment doesn't give a damn about the wind chill". Unfortunately, (sometimes) we have to remember that it only effects our skin and its evaporation rate. It's not really an issue when you are outside of earth's atomosphere though, as I doubt you would be subjecting your flesh to winds on pluto. (=

Re:So?

[ehud42]

ARGH! You had to mention windchill! One of the biggest misconceptions invented by so called tv meteorologists - aka: weather reporters, who being at least 50% reporter by definition must overhype any news to improve the ratings.

No matter how fast the wind may or may not be blowing on Pluto, the temperature will be the same!

The "Windchill" being reported in weather broadcasts is some quasi made up number that claims to represent how you'd feel outside. Out in the blowing wind. After a shower. Naked.

Sheesh.... more information is available here.

Sorry for the rant - I've either had too much coffee, or not enough - its too early in the morning to tell.

Re:So?

[millennial]

Don't worry about the rant; I know all that. I was just trying to be funny; I guess I wasn't too successful

Sensational + by someone without a science degree

[Dzimas]

The correct use is "43 kelvins." Unlike degrees Celsius or degrees Fahrenheit (both adjectives), it is a noun, and the correct pluralization is kelvins.

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.

Re:Shoggoths

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

"Where the puffed shoggoths splash in doubtful sleep.
But oh! If only they would make some sound,
Or wear a face where faces should be found!"

nice attempt though.

Fungi is one of Lovecrafts works that I find most entertaining/disturbing.

Ah-hah!

[RoffleTheWaffle]

At last, we finally know how we can counter global warming!

Re:Ah-hah!

[tompaulco]

Quick, fill our atmosphere with nitrogen!
Wow, that was fast. I just checked, and somebody has already got us 78% of the way there.

Hmmmm....

[gordgekko]

> 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?

BAH!

[dteichman2]

My P4 would fix that in about 10 mins.

Re:Sensational + by someone without a science degr

[grasshoppa]

That's actually about the funniest thing I've read on this article.

Yeah just like...

[electrosoccertux]

Just like my **** on a Friday night. Oh wait, that is to be expected isn't it.

On the bright side

[Carpe PM]

Scientists were correct about the humidity. Still zero!

Re:On the bright side

[dptalia]

So don't worry, it's a dry cold?

Re:Sensational + by someone without a science degr

[Vellmont]

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.

But it's not so much . . .

[Dausha]

It's not so much the cold as it is the humidity.

Re:Sensational + by someone without a science degr

[Guppy06]

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.

Re:Alternative Title

[jftitan]

So with your title, Pluto, is now the 'in thing'... I so want one now.. where can I buy this cooler Pluto you so mention?

Can there be anything more cooler than Pluto? Venus is Hot... I think I want a pin up poster of that one!

Heinlein was wrong about Pluto

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

About this anti-greenhouse effect...

[perigee369]

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...

Re:About this anti-greenhouse effect...

[craXORjack]

No. Pluto only has an atmosphere during its summer which it is currently in. (It is closer to the sun at 30AU than it will be again for a very long time) During the winter the atmosphere will give up it's heat and fall to the surface as solid nitrogen snow where it will sit for a couple hundred years until the sun once again turns it from solid to gas. But the surface will always stay at the same temperature. This is the same effect seen when you measure the temperature of water with ice cubes in it. The water will stay at 32 degrees until all the ice is gone even if you put a flame underneath. The added heat would merely make the ice melt faster rather than raise the water temperature.

Re:About this anti-greenhouse effect...

[MichaelSmith]

Since Pluto has just passed through summer we can assume that the solid nitrogen lasts long enough to keep the surface cool for the entire warm period. Exactly the way the north polar cap only just lasts the summer on Earth.

Re:About this anti-greenhouse effect...

[m50d]

Surely 0 degrees, unless you're keeping it under high pressure or something?

Re:About this anti-greenhouse effect...

[rahrens]

I would imagine that he means 32 degrees Faranheit, which is the freezing point of water - vs the 0 degrees Celsius you obviously mean...

Re:About this anti-greenhouse effect...

[khallow]

Not worth the bother. Earth is already mostly a nitrogen atmosphere. Instead, heating (and cooling) is influenced by molecules that occur in small amounts (eg, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and methane).

Re:About this anti-greenhouse effect...

[m50d]

Oh. People still use that?

Re:About this anti-greenhouse effect...

[Junior J. Junior III]

That's what I learned in high school chemistry, too, but I don't see how this is true. There have to be local areas in the glass of water that are of a higher temperature. Scale this up for a quick thought experiment. We have oceanic water frozen in polar ice caps. This ice melts and accumulates all the time. Yet the temperature at the earth's equator of oceanic water is NOT 0 degrees C. Obviously, local application of heat from solar radiation is capable of heating up the water BEFORE all the ice has melted off the poles. The same must be possible and is almost certainly true (just run an experiment and prove it) for a smaller body of liquid water with some amount of ice in it that is melting due to the application of an outside heat source.

Re:About this anti-greenhouse effect...

[NickFortune]

mmm... I think that in order for that to be true, you'd need to be using supercondicting water.

Probably it's more akin to the way the ice stays at or below freezing point until it all melts. In that case, as you say adding heat only makes the ice melt faster.

So, assuming that the sun never melts all the nitrogen ice on pluto, the surface temp isn't going to rise much above the freezing point of nitrogen, on account of all tht frozen N2 sucking up all the excess heat.

Which means you're quite right in terms of effect, just that the explanation is a bit wobbly. Of course, it could just be me being needlessly pedantic.

Re:About this anti-greenhouse effect...

[kabocox]

The same must be possible and is almost certainly true (just run an experiment and prove it) for a smaller body of liquid water with some amount of ice in it that is melting due to the application of an outside heat source.

I'd say it may be a limit of his measuring device. Better equipment would most likely prove you right. Your normal household or highschool stuff, most likely won't show a difference.

Re:About this anti-greenhouse effect...

[rahrens]

A few of us Luddites in the US...;-)

Re:About this anti-greenhouse effect...

[belg4mit]

Within the span of recorded history your second statement is only recently true.

Style right, Grammar wrong :-)

[sarastro]

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.

Re:Style right, Grammar wrong :-)

[Dzimas]

It's a proper adjective, actually. ;)

Wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

so we're back to calling Pluto a planet again?

Re:Wait...

[n8k99]

Anonymous Coward has seems to have lost a planet. How embarrassing, how embarrassing.

The Pentium Extreme Edition might actually burn up

[keilinw]

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

Re:Sensational + by someone without a science degr

[Dzimas]

I was referring to the root post as sensational, not the article. "Much Colder..." and "degrees Kelvin" demonstrate a lack of grounding. TFA was actually pretty interesting (especially considering the source), but it describes a moderate effect akin to an "open system" air conditioner.

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.

Re:Sensational + by someone without a science degr

[Vellmont]

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".

Awesome

[RyoShin]

Now it will be so much easier to make a cold fusion reactor.

In other news...

[Somatic]

> it's just the sort of place you'd need to run a few Pentium Extreme Edition systems.

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.

Absolute Scale Nazi

[Nepharis]

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?

Re:Sensational + by someone without a science degr

[LeoHat]

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?

anti-greenhouse effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

anti-greenhouse effect? Shouldn't that be called the whitehouse effect :)

Re:XBox 360

[Firehed]

But unfortunately you'll need the longest extension cord ever. Kevlar shielding is recommended for the area that'll pass through the asteroid belt.

Re:OUTGOING

[MichaelSmith]

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.

uhoh

[FluffyWithTeeth]

Wait, does this mean my plan to set up an eternal summer hot sunshine beach resort in unclaimed territory won't work now?

Awwww shit, here come the repo men..

Tornadoes?

[mattr]

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..

Re:Tornadoes?

[hyc]

That's an interesting point. From the article, Pluto receives about 1/1000th as much sunlight as the Earth. From here http://www.powerfromthesun.net/chapter1/Chapter1.h tm we see that the Earth receives 1367 watts per square meter, so we can assume that Pluto typically receives only 1.367 watts per square meter. Dumping the heat from a single P4EE into Pluto's surface could be pretty disruptive, hundreds of watts over a small surface area. The rush of nitrogen vapor would be like a bomb exploding.

Not A Surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, you'd be emotionally distant too if your master was never home, always away lobbying congress for copyright extensions.

Hmmm...

[squoozer]

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.

Refrigeration cycle not reverse-greenhouse.

[0xC2]

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.

Man...

[Life700MB]

Man, is logic that is colder, it's January! What would you expect?

Come back in summer.


--
Superb hosting 20GB Storage, 1_TB_ bandwidth, ssh, $7.95

Re:Man...

[tompaulco]

Man, is logic that is colder, it's January! What would you expect?
How does it feel to have a whole hemisphere pissed off at you?

Just in time!

[noidentity]

Good thing I saw as I was leaving on my vacation to Pluto; I hadn't packed any winter clothing. Thanks Slashdot!

Off topic Kelvin joke

[Flying pig]

Lord Kelvin has a son who inherits the title. He goes to Cambridge and takes his first degree in Natural Sciences and gets a First, while still managing to play Rugby. Then he goes to Oxford to do his BSc, and then goes back to Cambridge where he does a brilliant PhD while turning out part time for the England cricket team. At which point he has a nervous breakdown from all the work. As part of his recovery program he is found a nice quiet job working as a bus conductor (NB only older UK residents will understand this.)
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.

Re:Off topic Kelvin joke

[Ed Avis]

A few choice quotations from Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society:

Radio has no future.

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

X-rays will prove to be a hoax.

Apparently these were in 1899. They're all over the net and in print (eg the book Return of Heroic Failures) but I can't find a definitive source in context.

it makes difference

[someone1234]

Guess it is perfect HQ for a cybernetic overlord, the whole planet could be used as a liquid nitrogen cooler :) No overheating for sure.

Re:The Pentium Extreme Edition might actually burn

[hyc]

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.

To continue the pedantry....

[MartinG]

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"

Re:To continue the pedantry....

[Ctrl-Z]

... that's Celsius.

HTH

Re:Sensational + by someone without a science degr

[Rob Kaper]

No science degree? What are you talking about, Kelvin has at least 43.

But still perfect...

[Yvanhoe]

...for your vodka drink !

Re:The Pentium Extreme Edition might actually burn

[rseuhs]

but I have a feeling it will be adequate

Famous last words...

Re:Sensational + by someone without a science degr

[m50d]

I'm sure some newspaper will soon start running headlines about how Pluto is "23% colder than anticipated."

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.

Cold

[DarkSnake]

I don't think that would be that huge a differance, as it's incredibly cold anyway. Still interesting, though.

Re:Sensational + by someone without a science degr

[khallow]

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.

Re:Ugh...

[frankm_slashdot]

hahah, that was my first thought, actually.

just to nitpick...

[godless dave]

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.

Re:Shoggoths

[EC7]

Actually, the Migo are the fungi from Yuggoth (Pluto). The Shoggoths are amorpheous blobs from Antartica, and are natives of this planet, being a slave race created by the Elder Things, who were killed many eons ago by the Great Old Ones and the Cthulhu Spawn.

What a great place to cool your Xbox 360!

[digitaldc]

Now you will be able to get those super-high frame rates you always wanted.

So it's colder, but how is the snow?

[happyrabit]

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

Wasn't he the source of Clarke's Law?

[Flying pig]

You know, the one that says that when an elderly, distinguished scientist says that something is impossible, he is almost always wrong?

Degrees kelvin? Pedant Mode On!

[gmccloskey]

Repeat after me - there are no degrees kelvin, only Kelvin. Degrees centigrade and farenheit yes, Kelvin no.

Re:Degrees kelvin? Pedant Mode On!

[internewt]

Yeah, I noticed that too, and to be on the front page of /. is really quite poor. The CNN article does use "Kelvin" and "degrees Fahrneheit" correctly, and I was expecting that to be wrong. To be honest, the CNN article is good science reporting! A rarity in the mainstream these days.... though I've just noticed it was written by space.com, so that will explain it!

Yesterday (maybe this AM) on the BBC's TV news they had their science correspondant on talking about bird 'flu, and they (news caster + SC) talked about an epidemic or pandemic, and the science correspondant explained that for a pandemic to occur then it will have to "mix" in a human's body. From my understanding, the current worrysome strain cannot pass human-human, so to do so the virus would have to evolve or mutate (depending on how you want to look at it) in the human body, not mix. To me, this just appeared to be bad science reporting again in the mainstream media due to dumbing down, and on the BBC it appeared especially bad (not a for-profit organisation, where quality and excellence seems to be their aims).

Kelvin, bring your winter parka

[sl4shd0rk]

And remind Hobbes to bring his scarf.

Bah!

[Cro Magnon]

I've survived in Minnesota. How bad could Pluto be?

News just in...

[himagain]

NASA seek Geordie crew for first manned flight to Pluto. (T-shirts will be provided)

Re:In related news...

[Gabrill]

And then it dawned on them that they were 90% of the fun people on the internet, and simply built their own when they got there.

The rest of the world was left with spammers and IT support staff. Sadly the crew of NakedNews was among the overclockers.

Proper "adjective"

[sarastro]

I suppose some English Grammars will call it that. That is very irritating to the rest of mankind (in the Indo-European languages).

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 ... 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 ...

Well,

[osho_gg]

On the plus side, it would be easier to achieve cold fusion on pluto than previously thought :)

Spaceships

[No Such Agency]

They are really large alien space craft. Pluto is powered down while Charon is still running.

Re:Sensational + by someone without a science degr

[Ctrl-Z]

In other other news, a question mark should only be used at the end of a question?

Heard this tune before...

[argStyopa]

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.

Re:Heard this tune before...

[TheDrewbert]

Oh, and it's Bush's fault. ... well that's just a given.

Sheesh

[Mad Ogre]

Still not as cold as my Ex. But almost.

If only I had mod points

[jxm387]

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.

Good news for Pluto's overclockers!

[m0i]

Let's squeeze more Mhz out of these CPU and GPU cores, and even the stock fan should suffice :-)

Re:Sensational + by someone without a science degr

[n6kuy]

They'd be Kelvin Klein jeans, I assume...

Re:In other news...

[belloc]

The White House, misreading the term "global warming", immediately denied that Pluto exists.

I knew that somehow we would find a way to blame this on Bush.

How many times must the Sci-Fi autoors be right?

[RPI Geek]

An intresting book: Camelot 30K

Re:Sensational + by someone without a science degr

[Syberghost]

Wait, you'd wear shorts and a t-shirt at 53 kelvin?

That's totally sweater weather; you're crazy!

Like spearing eels in a bucket!

[Thud457]

Never used a dictionary, eh?

In case you don't get it - like me, at first...

[IAAP]

Mickey Mouse. That's who he's referring.

Re:Sensational + by someone without a science degr

[belg4mit]

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).

Re:Sensational + by someone without a science degr

[khallow]

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.

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.

Re:Sensational + by someone without a science degr

[belg4mit]

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.

43 kelvin is nothing

[inphizzible_friend]

Ever been to Minnesota?

yeah, but . . .

[vaporland]

. . . how cold is uranus?

Obligatory Movie Reference

[Lotharus]

Get it? Your anus?
- He doesn't get it, Ty.
Get it? Your anus?
- He doesn't get it!

Re:Sensational + by someone without a science degr

[khallow]

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.

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.

Re:Sensational + by someone without a science degr

[belg4mit]

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.

PS> Technically people weigh Newtons and are massed in kilograms :-P

Re:Sensational + by someone without a science degr

[khallow]

PS> Technically people weigh Newtons and are massed in kilograms :-P

I am suitably humbled, sir. :)