Pluto

[Razosh]

New Horizons has finally reached the dwarf planet Pluto and for the first time ever we have a good representation of what the dwarf planet looks like.

Pluto has been found to be quite larger than previously estimated which makes it bigger than the estimated size of the dwarf planet Eris. We now know from the photos that Pluto is 2 370 kilometers (1 473 miles) in diameter. Eris on the other hand is estimated to have a diameter of 2 326 km. The newly found scale of Pluto means that it has a lower density than previously believed and that the dwarf planet carries more ice in its interior than was previously thought.

Plutos biggest moon Charon has also been photoed and has shown to have a size of 1 208 km (751 miles) in diameter. The other two moons that we have photos of, Hydra and Nix have a diameter of 45 and 35 kilometers (30 and 20 miles). The smallest two moons have still not had photos taken of them however. Styx the smallest of the five moons has has estimated size that might be as small as 10 km in diameter.

For a more detailed understanding of the scale of Pluto and its moons compared to Earth here's two more pictures.

Size comparison

 

[Arad MNK]

FINALLY! WE (Doesn't mean humans, don't think I'm stupid) REACHED PLUTO AFTER 5 YEARS!

 

[edo494]

10 not 5

 

[Chen]

Yeiye(I wonder why)! But let's wait for at least 23 months to get more data back, maybe we'll see some draenei *ehem* aliens with the discovery.

 

[Heinvers]

Pretty large indeed.
Well, that makes it less the size of Titan(2576 km), which is kinda ironic given that Titan is a moon.

Must be a sizable chunk of ice covered by dust and whatnot if it's that light(density).
It would be great to catch a glimpse of the seasonal thin atmosphere that the planet acquires during its Perihelion/'summer' position.

I wonder if it's able to have a notable magnetic field at all(since the Galilean moons have 'some sort' of it).

...maybe we'll see some aliens with the discovery.

Joke or not I wouldn't get my hopes too high (microbes at best, doubtful) since it's a way long from the sun
(hmm, tidal effects from Charon's close orbit and large size could trigger some heating in the mantle
but not that much to support something noticeable.)
(Even alien microbes need some kind of mineral on which to feed on. Dunno if water ice with dust can do that much for it).

Edit: No, don't expect to see that kind of stuff there.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Looks a little bit like earth's moon just with less craters.

Boring... somehow; I expected Pluto to be ... blue. I mean, it has ice, after all.

 

[edo494]

you do realize that only liquid water is blue right? Look at north or south pole, they are white, and I dont expect pluto to have >0° even in its core, let alone 1200 km long shaft of liquid water.

 

[Arad MNK]

and I dont expect pluto to have >0° even in its core

ARE YOU SERIOUS? Cores are always fuckin' hot!

 

[Deleted member 242951]

This a great achievement you know...
But still Saturns my favourite.

 

[edo494]

ARE YOU SERIOUS? Cores are always fuckin' hot!

source of this claim? Even uran most likely has deep freeze'd core, since its gas giant, not solid planet

 

[hiphop4eva]

I want a planet where if your dna gets into its atmosphere your whole body freezes.

 

[LordDz]

I want a planet where if your dna gets into its atmosphere your whole body freezes.

That's called space.

 

[Razosh]

ARE YOU SERIOUS? Cores are always fuckin' hot!

Actually here's an image of Plutos inner layers.

 

[Heinvers]

ARE YOU SERIOUS? Cores are always fuckin' hot!

Wrong! Most moon/dwarf planet cores are actually solidified cold rocky schnitzels.
Even Mars is theorized to have solid/cooled off core.

I want a planet where if your dna gets into its atmosphere your whole body freezes.

You'll love Triton then. Even your crap will freeze over.

source of this claim? Even uran most likely has deep freeze'd core, since its gas giant, not solid planet

You mean YoUranus?
Yeah, well not quite frozen. Most gas giants/ice giants have metallic cores at high densities.

Edit: Razosh beat me at it

 

[edo494]

well yea, Im just not used to English names for such things as planets.

I will just add that if planet has iron in great amount inside its core, and it is "fuckin' hot", then it will have magnetic field of some sorts. I doubt pluto has any

 

[Rui]

(...)
Boring... somehow; I expected Pluto to be ... blue. I mean, it has ice, after all.

I could swear I had always seen Pluto painted dark blue in my textbooks =P

 

[Razosh]

I could swear I had always seen Pluto painted dark blue in my textbooks =P

Well unless those textbooks were printed yesterday you wouldn't have gotten an accurate depiction of Pluto.

 

[Rui]

So you seem to be quite into this Razosh =P what are the perspectives for investigation? What do scientists intend to study on Pluto and what do they seek to learn?

 

[Razosh]

So you seem to be quite into this Razosh =P what are the perspectives for investigation? What do scientists intend to study on Pluto and what do they seek to learn?

I find it enjoyable to read up on and I am interested because the world is so much larger than any of us can understand. This might not be a massive step but it's a step none the less to solving the deeper secrets of the universe. I can't be the only one who's interested in what lies beyond sol, or in it for that matter. We still have no good pictures of the dwarf planets in our solar system past Pluto. (Haumea, Makemake and Eris.) What makes it interesting isn't that I don't know but that humanity doesn't know. And that makes me interested in both past, future and what lies beyond our borders.

 

[Chen]

Lawl, I still think that Pluto is Draenor because of that moons, then orcs will come then the draenei...Kill me nao

 

[Wasabee]

ARE YOU SERIOUS? Cores are always fuckin' hot!

Not all cores are hot.
If the core is hot then it must have a magnetic field. If it the planet have a magnetic field it could possibly have an atmosphere since it is protected by the magnetic field but sadly it doesn't have.

 

[Deleted member 242951]

I seem to agree with Chen on the Draenor point ! !!

 

[hiphop4eva]

Lawl, I still think that Pluto is Draenor because of that moons, then orcs will come then the draenei...Kill me nao

I want Akama

 

[Gismo359]

I want a planet where if your dna gets into its atmosphere your whole body freezes.

You are already in one. There have been cases of people freezing entirely, and returning back to normal in a month (about one night of freezing, patient started moving in just a few hours after getting to hospital).
I also think that was in the US (not sure though), so I cant imagine what it would be in one of the poles.
As far as I remember, in the case I read about the woman was trying to walk ~20 meters from her broken car to the house of her neighbour.

 

[Razosh]

So there are a few new things first of all here we have a picture of Charon, the largest of Pluto's five moons.

Something that's unusual with Charon in comparison to other moons like lets say Luna (Earths moon) is that Charon has relatively few craters. This would indicate that Charon has a very young crust compared to other moons likely to be the result of inner geological activity. Luna on the other hand has an irregular crust with craters on the side facing Earth and mountains on the backside. It is a theory amongst astronomers that this is because at one point in time Earth had two moons and the smaller one crashed inside of Luna's backside creating this uneven terrain. (I know Luna's a bit of topic but I f-ing love that story. ^^)

Back to Pluto and the main topic astronomers have discovered south of the equator NASA have found a range of mountains.

What makes these mountains unique is that they stand about 3 500 meters tall (11 000 feet) and they are thought to be no older than 100 000 000 years old. And while that by human standards is a long time by geological standards that is an immensely swift growth. The general belief is that because there are so many nearby craters the mountains have been pushed and forced up by meteors striking the surface. It is also worth mentioning that unlike the icy moons of the larger planets in our solar system Pluto can not generate heat from gravitational pull. This means that Pluto would have to create those mountains in a different way than we are familiar with.

 

[hiphop4eva]

You are already in one. There have been cases of people freezing entirely, and returning back to normal in a month (about one night of freezing, patient started moving in just a few hours after getting to hospital).
I also think that was in the US (not sure though), so I cant imagine what it would be in one of the poles.
As far as I remember, in the case I read about the woman was trying to walk ~20 meters from her broken car to the house of her neighbour.

I was talking about the whole world, you cant get frozen in a desert. And you cant get freezed in a second in world.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

you do realize that only liquid water is blue right? Look at north or south pole, they are white, and I dont expect pluto to have >0° even in its core, let alone 1200 km long shaft of liquid water.

Dude, that was my naive view as a kid, not what I know now.

Also, Neptun and Uranus appear blue because methane absorbs wavelengths in the red spectrum. And Pluto actually has a methane atmosphere, so it's not even that far fetched.



It's a shame that the general public (except the science nerds) doesn't really recognize the scope of this achievement. We just photographed Pluto; a planet that is was the last bastion of our solar system and farther away than anyone can possibly imagine (it's funny how uneducated people greatly underestimate astronomical distances by a factor of thousands) and special in so many ways (for example, it's the only planet of our solar system that has an inclined orbit around the sun).

Everything that lies beyond is mysterious and unknown. Pluto is just one of billions of objects in the Kuiper Belt. I can't wait to see pictures of all the unknown objects from the Kuiper Belt and what magnificent discoveries we will make there...

It's a shame that we will never reach the Oort cloud within the lifespan of any manmade object (let alone human).

 

[Razosh]

I was talking about the whole world, you cant get frozen in a desert. And you cant get freezed in a second in world.

Why are you people speaking so much of World of WarCraft here? Don't get me wrong we have a forum section dedicated to everything related to World of WarCraft and I'm quite active on it but could people please just keep to the topic?

Everything that lies beyond is mysterious and unknown. Pluto is just one of billions of objects in the Kuiper Belt. I can't wait to see pictures of all the unknown objects from the Kuiper Belt and what magnificent discoveries we will make there...

The biggest mystery right now though is Eris, though we still also have no photos of Haumea and Makemake. For people who don't know this is the order of the planets.

Mercury
Venus
Gaia (Earth)
Mars
Ceres (dwarf planet)
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Pluto (dwarf planet)
Haumea (dwarf planet)
Makemake (dwarf planet)
Eris (dwarf planet)

 

[Mecheon]

Lawl, I still think that Pluto is Draenor because of that moons, then orcs will come then the draenei...Kill me nao

Nah, Pluto's the home of the Mi-Go.

Totally different

 

[Ofel]

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Great, now I have caries. :/

 

[Wasabee]

The general belief is that because there are so many nearby craters the mountains have been pushed and forced up by meteors striking the surface. It is also worth mentioning that unlike the icy moons of the larger planets in our solar system Pluto can not generate heat from gravitational pull. This means that Pluto would have to create those mountains in a different way than we are familiar with.

So you mean mountains in Pluto wasn't created by tectonic plates pushing each other in opposite directions. That is one possible theory about the creation of mountains.

 

[Razosh]

So you mean mountains in Pluto wasn't created by tectonic plates pushing each other in opposite directions. That is one possible theory about the creation of mountains.

I can't take credit for that theory though that goes to the astronomers at NASA. But no the plates can not form a range of mountains that massive in 100 million years. The plates also doe not get fuel from the core since there is no heat in there like our planet does.

 

[Wasabee]

I can't take credit for that theory though that goes to the astronomers at NASA. But no the plates can not form a range of mountains that massive in 100 million years. The plates also doe not get fuel from the core since there is no heat in there like our planet does.

That's why mountains forming in a planet without an active core is bizarre.