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The Lower Atmosphere of Pluto Revealed
Matt_dk writes "Using ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have gained valuable new insights about the atmosphere of the dwarf planet Pluto. The scientists found unexpectedly large amounts of methane in the atmosphere, and also discovered that the atmosphere is hotter than the surface by about 40 degrees, although it still only reaches a frigid minus 180 degrees Celsius. These properties of Pluto's atmosphere may be due to the presence of pure methane patches or of a methane-rich layer covering the dwarf planet's surface."
cue the "methane" & "uranus" jokes.
... concerning a celestial body whose public status has recently changed from "Boring Planet" to "Boring Dwarf Planet" after its 15 minutes of fame in the news. I guess now it's a "Less Boring Dwarf Planet".
What's next, cold spots on Venus (i.e. cold enough that lead is almost solid again)?
I've actually just transmitted an update to the article about Pluto in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It now reads "Mostly Boring."
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
So Pluto could be a useful fuel source when mankind starts to explore outside the solar system. I wonder in how many years/decades time this will be.
Tim
so when the fossil fuels run out, we can burn pluto till its gone (this may also be do-able for other kuiper belt objects)
These properties of Pluto's atmosphere may be due to the presence of pure methane patches or of a methane-rich layer covering the dwarf planet's surface."
These properties may also be do to the presence of sheep on Pluto.
So, scientists discover that pluto smells like butt.
6gaireohvjn3rehnv5rje6oahgre
That's my head slamming into the keyboard, by the way.
It *is* a dwarf planet, that's the whole point.
Also, saying "fixed that for you" does not make you sound clever. It makes you sound like an asshole.
Live and learn.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Really.
"new insights about the atmosphere of the dwarf planet Pluto"
Aww, come on, you guys are just rubbing it in now!
Given that it has both a moon and an atmosphere, are they going to admit that it's a planet (albeit a weird one) -- or do we let the definition become so strict that soon nothing qualifies as a planet anymore?
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
Bring back Pluto the Planet.
If Pluto gets called a planet, then Eris would also be called a planet, since it is bigger than Pluto. Otherwise "Planet" would be a very arbitrary definition.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
It's been 'terraformed' in line with Yuggoth.
<rant>
That they decided to demote it from being a planet simply because we've learned enough about it to know it shouldn't have been called that in the first place.
"Atom" was supposed to be the smallest possible thing, so small as to be utterly indivisible, yet when things smaller than what was thought to be the atom were discovered, they didn't go around saying that the elements weren't atoms anymore, even though "atomic" still means "indivisible".
I can appreciate that by the criteria that actually exist for a planet, that Pluto would fail to qualify, and I firmly believe that such information should readily accompany any educational article that might exist about it, but I'm one of those people who thinks that Pluto should have remained a planet (or a "double planet", more precisely). This would not have necessitated permitting other objects which were known to not to be planets from being admitted into the category because the argument would remain that Pluto would only still be considered a planet because all technical observations that were available at the time of its discovery appeared to indicate that it qualified as such, much as how the elements were originally defined as atoms, long before it was discovered there was something smaller. Specifically, then, pluto should be an "honorary planet", not because of the debate about whether or not it was ever a planet to begin with, but because there was *NO* a debate about the matter for many years because until more precise measurements were available, nobody really knew that it didn't actually qualify. We can admit that we were wrong and Pluto shouldn't have been called one in the first place, but it just seems wrong, somehow, to demote an object that has held onto that status for so long simply because we didn't know enough about the object to make the distinction when it was discovered.
</rant>
Hey, was just trying to be funny... Cracked me up anyway. Chill, man. /. memes are great if you ask me.
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
Well, obviously there must be super cool space cows living on Pluto - if we have to believe that all hydrocarbons are the result of organic life - and not the other way around.
It sounds like we really need to start working on reversing the anthropogenic global warming of Pluto.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Also I'd like to point out that jumping down someone's throat for making a joke, especially as an AC, makes you look like an asshole.
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
wouldn't methane at -180C be in liquid form? (boiling point is -161C)
-- All this knowledge is giving me a raging brainer.
Gee, the solar system is filled methane, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide. If we are to say that were are going to a natural universe, then, if anything is a pollutant, it is our planet's low CO2 and low methane atmosphere.
This is my sig.
Cold is an absolute term in that you can have absolute zero. Hot is a relative term in that there is no absolute hot, just degrees. Well maybe not - seems like the Planck temperature at 10^32 Kelvin might be an absolute hot. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/zero/hot.html Makes sense given a Planck length and Planck time.
[quote]6gaireohvwaaahwaaahwaaahwhateverjn3rehnv5rje6oahgre[/quote]
There, fixed that for you.
Seriously...with THAT big a target...
It must be dwarf cows! Herds of tiny bovines roam Pluto's surface. It takes seven of them to make the galaxy's most expensive burger.
Yes, we are rock nerds. And we like it that way.
If you want to go on a website to mock nerds for something you're not interested in... well, you've certainly come to the wrong place.
Also I'd like to point out that jumping down someone's throat for making a joke, especially as an AC, makes you an asshole.
There fixed that for you.
Our bugs are smarter than your test scripts.
We prefer to be called a "gravitational mass challenged planet", you insensitive clod!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Hot and cold are both relative terms. Absolute zero is a theoretical temperature at which there is a complete lack of heat. (I say theoretical because it may not be possible to even reach absolute zero in our universe.) While that would likely be described as cold compared to any other temperature, it is not the definition of "cold." If two objects were at absolute zero, then one would not be cold compared to the other. If there is a maximum theoretical temperature, that would also not be the definition of "hot."
Cold, warm, and hot are adjectives used to describe the heat of something in relative terms. Absolute terms would be exact temperatures.
To turn your argument on it's head, cold is not only not absolute, it doesn't even exist. It is a relative term describing a lack of heat. Heat exists and cold is merely a description of the lack of it relative to some other amount of heat. Heat in terms of temperature is absolute.
I wonder how how much of whatever the New Horizons probe finds during it's Pluto fly-by in 2015 will already be known by then, when you take the ever improving optics and other remote viewing technology into account.
The presence of methane on Mars is considered a strong indicator of some form of current life there.
http://www.universetoday.com/2004/03/30/whats-creating-the-methane-life-or-volcanoes/
While there are natural processes that can produce it, it decays quickly and so it is more likely that an organism is providing consistent replenishment.
However, I don't think anyone expects that Pluto would be able to support life--too too cold. Is there some explanation for natural forming, and natural persisting, on Pluto that makes sense that does not imply the presence of life?
--
$tar -xvf
This begs the question of why draw any line at all. Nature doesn't draw a line between planets and non-planets; why should scientists be so gung-ho on drawing one? All of the differences are differences of degree; why try to shoehorn everything into a difference of kind? The facts about the objects of either pseudo-kind will in the end be explained by appeal to the same laws of physics. The distinction has no predictive value at all.
In addition, how does the criterion you single out it make it any easier to decide where to draw the line? The decision was and still is controversial, which, prima facie, contradicts your claim that that criterion made it easier to decide. Isn't it probably the case that the only people who think the criterion makes it "much easier" to decide are probably those who agree with the criteria anyway? That would, once more, beg the question, because of course, it is very easy to agree with something you already agree with, isn't it?
Are you adequate?
And we won't be able to see the surface with the flyby in 2015?
While the AC may just be trolling for a reaction, there is something in the general culture, even within science, to what he says.
Some years back, I spent the night as a layman at the UNAM observatory in Baja, with some astrophysicists taking measurements of Cepheid Variables in Andromeda. At some point, I asked one of the team members a question about recent developments in planetary astronomy (probably something to do with Cassini), check out his reply: "No idea, because as astrophysicists, we find small stuff like that boring". My jaw almost hit the floor with that offhanded dismissal coming from a professional astronomer.
Later in the night, I got him, and got him good, by asking him what mechanism allows for the behavior that Cepheid Variables display. He stuttered for a moment, visibly perplexed, and replied "I don't know, let me get back to you on that one". These guys have never asked themselves why the objects they've monitored for years behave the way they do.
That's been an inevitable problem that has plagued the scientific community for a long time - compartmentalization, which leads to a misguided sense of elitism, the equivalent of wearing horse blinders and being proud of it. Whatever happened to the intellectual restlessness that got these people into science in the first place? Where, when and why did they freeze up? Focusing on an academic specialty and sticking to it is the only way to get results in many cases, but not everywhere and/nor all the time.
Score big points for NASA, they've officially recognized and addressed via the situation via the Origins Program, an interdisciplinary network of data in which every area of knowledge is equally important, compelling and can only enrich all other areas.
The most famous case in point, for decades, paleontologists were searching for the source of mass extinctions by looking at the ground, not even contemplating the possibility that astronomical phenomena might have caused these events, as it was beyond their realm of study.
Here's another, anybody attempting to study the dynamics and evolution of spiral galaxies should take a long and hard look at the available data on Saturn's rings.
So basically, NASA's Origins Program is attempting to build bridges between ivory towers, and that can only be a good thing.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
I won't pretend the hypothesis was accepted immediately but once the Yucatan crater was identified (by a satellite looking down, but that's more engineering than astronomy surely?) that was pretty much the clincher.
However it is good science where so-called 'separate' disciplines start working together, though it's pretty common. The Victorian-era divisions across science become more irrelevant daily, and only persist due to government and university funding models that still use them to determine grants allocation.
Pluto Express, due to arrive in 2015, is a flyby, and will only give us a 'snapshot' of Pluto. It would be nice to have something to observe Pluto's changing seasons over the next 200-odd years.
Dude, dwarf planet is not the preferred nomenclature. Radially challenged. Please!
I suspect the heat in the atmosphere is caused by the Putonians burning the abundant methane to keep warm.
I'm Your Moon
- Jonathan Coulton
They invented a reason
That's why it stings
They don't think you matter
Because you don't have pretty rings
I keep telling you I don't care
I keep saying there's one thing they can't change
I'm your moon
You're my moon
We go round and round
From out here, it's the rest of the world that looks so small
Promise me
You will always remember who you are
Let them shuffle the numbers
Watch them come and go
We're the ones who are out here
Out past the edge of what they know
We can only be who we are
It doesn't matter if they don't understand
I'm your moon
You're my moon
We go round and round
From out here, it's the rest of the world that looks so small
Promise me
You will always remember who you are
Who you were
Long before
They said you weren't
Anymore
Sad excuse for a sunrise
It's so cold out here
Ice and silence and dark skies
As we go round another year
Let them think what they like, we're fine
I will always be right here next to you
I'm your moon
You're my moon
We go round and round
From out here, it's the rest of the world that looks so small
Promise me
You will always remember who you are
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