New Horizons' First Ultra High Resolution Photos of Pluto Released

StartsWithABang writes: After a 9 year journey to Pluto, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach to Pluto this past July, taking so much data that it will take a full 16 months to send it all back. The first of the highest resolution photos ever taken were released by NASA earlier today, and before the data has even been scientifically analyzed, a visual inspection teaches us a number of things about its sedimentary history, its active geology and its transient, eroding mountainous terrain. Perhaps the best part: Pluto is the prototype for the most common type of world in the Universe, even though it's not a planet anymore.

Comments

Commonality and heat pumps

[Tablizer]

Pluto is the prototype for the most common type of world in the Universe

It may be true that Kuiper-belt-like objects are the most common kind, but Pluto is probably unique in that it comes relatively close to the sun, and the temporary heat is likely what causes the "pumping action" that shapes Pluto's dynamic geology. Bodies further out may not get enough energy from the sun to drive similar processes.

But being we've only seen one so far*, we can only speculate. Although other large Kuiper bodies are (on average) further away, they may still come close enough on occasion for some of the same heat/cold pump cycling action.

Eris is a possible example. It comes about as close as Pluto does but swings further away. It would be interesting to see how a wider temperature range shapes it.

* Some moons of the gas giants may be from the Kuiper belt, but being close to a large planet shapes them in ways that makes it difficult to know what they originally were like.

Re:Commonality and heat pumps

[Rei]

There's also the possibility of much larger objects further out - we're not very good at detecting objects in our solar system at 100+ AU. WISE effectively ruled out Jupiter and Saturn sized bodies a good way out toward the Oort Cloud, but there could be Mars-sized bodies as near as 100-200 AU and Earth-sized bodies as near as a few hundred AU, and potentially Uranus/Neptune sized bodies further than that.

I really look forward to the LSST coming online in a few years - the number of discoveries it should make should be incredible. :) Its not the largest telescope under construction but it's designed to be a data flood - its 3,2 gigapixel camera will produce up to 30 TB of data per night. Virtually anything of significant size that moves in the solar system, it's going to see it. It's expected to, for example, detect 100% of all KBOs larger than 100km, whereas we only know of an estimated 1% of them today.

Re:Commonality and heat pumps

[Rei]

Where were you taught this and on what grounds was it based? Look up the sednoids** - one of the three leading theories to explain their orbits is that there's a large (~inner planet sized) body orbiting out there. The other two include a close pass with another star or other large object (although this has fallen out of favor), and other large bodies being near the sun during the formation of the solar system that have since moved apart. But a planet seems to offer the most explanatory value.

** The short of it is that the closest that they ever get to the sun is well too far away for any large known body in our solar system to have scattered them, yet they have highly elliptical orbits. Yet both of the sednoids with established arguments of perihelion (there's a third, V774104, for which it's as of yet unknown) curiously have the same argument of perihelion, which makes single-pass scattering events unlikely, and even ancient scattering events unlikely, as their arguments of perihelion should have been randomized by the weak interactions with the gas giants since then.