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  • Pluto's surprises

    Wow ,,next it will be confirmation of life out there ,,disclosure and not before time IMO

    Pluto: NASA Says Probe Found Blue Skies and Frozen Water Surfaces on Dwarf Planet
    The probe sent images that showed Earth-like features on the dwarf planet. Professor Brian Cox said recently that there could be an ocean warm enough for living organisms beneath its frozen surface.

  • #2
    Tankie, I think this has got to be contender for discovery of the decade. Pluto is just one of many dwarf planets and planetoids in the outer solar system. Some of the NASA scientists are now saying that there could actually be more life on the subsurface oceans of those solar system bodies than on earth itself!

    And just a few years ago we thought Pluto was downgraded.

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    • #3
      http://video.pbs.org/video/2365527017/

      http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/chasing-pluto.html

      PBS' documentary on the mission. It gives more back ground about the science of the outer solar system bodies.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by citanon View Post
        Tankie, I think this has got to be contender for discovery of the decade. Pluto is just one of many dwarf planets and planetoids in the outer solar system. Some of the NASA scientists are now saying that there could actually be more life on the subsurface oceans of those solar system bodies than on earth itself!

        And just a few years ago we thought Pluto was downgraded.
        Life is in great abundance in the vastness of the universe Citanon , not just microbiological but very intelligent far superior technologically advanced life ,,,IMHO .And a view shared by millions .

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        • #5
          Originally posted by tankie View Post
          Life is in great abundance in the vastness of the universe Citanon , not just microbiological but very intelligent far superior technologically advanced life ,,,IMHO .And a view shared by millions .
          Tankie..... how did you figure out that I was really posting from Alpha Omicron????? I must do better to disguise my Omicronian colloquialisms.... but it's not always easy to type in English with only 10 tentacles.....

          ^_^

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          • #6
            Originally posted by tankie View Post
            Wow ,,next it will be confirmation of life out there ,,disclosure and not before time IMO

            Pluto: NASA Says Probe Found Blue Skies and Frozen Water Surfaces on Dwarf Planet
            The probe sent images that showed Earth-like features on the dwarf planet. Professor Brian Cox said recently that there could be an ocean warm enough for living organisms beneath its frozen surface.
            one whiskey glass worth of pluto blue and a quick peek...

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            • #7
              [QUOTE=citanon;997688]Tankie..... how did you figure out that I was really posting from Alpha Omicron????? I must do better to disguise my Omicronian colloquialisms.... but it's not always easy to type in English with only 10 tentacles.....

              ^_^[/QUOTE

              10 huh , wow

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              • #8
                The heat necessary for the sustaining the existence of liquid water (even oceans) believed to exist below the surfaces of various Jovian and Saturnian moons comes largely from gravitation stresses generated by the orbits of those bodies around their gas giant parents. Pluto lacks a giant companion to generate such internal stresses. Since its way to far out to rely on the sun as a source of heat that only leaves radioactive decay in any rocky core it might possess (which is not much if anything). Given these factors the only time you are likely too see liquid water on Pluto would be as a result of the occasional random seismic or impact event, neither of which would sustain even a periodic supply of liquid water under the planets surface.

                This makes the inner bodies referred to earlier as well any similar bodies orbiting Uranus and Neptune as much more likely candidates for alien life. (Not withstanding the Galactic Federations listening posts on Io which are of course occupied by imported life forms, not naturally occurring ones.)
                If you are emotionally invested in 'believing' something is true you have lost the ability to tell if it is true.

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                • #9
                  You missed the actual translation: we have no fucking clue on how liquid water can be formed.

                  Asteriod impact on ice will never make water flow like what we've seen. At best, it is a rock impact pattern. Not water flowing for 100s of metres.
                  Chimo

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                  • #10
                    From a NASA update - there appears to be a major outcrop of water ice apparently in 'Baré Montes' region of Pluto with numerous (much smaller outcrops) mostly associated with impact craters and valleys between mountains. Elsewhere on the former planet the ice layer is hidden by layers of other chemical compounds.
                    If you are emotionally invested in 'believing' something is true you have lost the ability to tell if it is true.

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                    • #11
                      I don't see any way that Pluto could possibly have temperatures warm enough for there to be liquid water unless it happens to have a radioactive core or some other magical energy source. Otherwise, its temperature has to be quite uniformly pretty near the temperature of the galactic background.

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                      • #12
                        The surface temperature of Pluto is 44 +-11 Kelvin, with the only known colder, non-shadowed surface in the solar system being Triton at 38 +-3 Kelvin. That's nowhere near the cosmic background of 3 +-2 Kelvin.

                        Any flowing surface liquid on Pluto is heated nitrogen ice of a temperature above 63 Kelvin.

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                        • #13
                          Golly. 44 K sure sounds pretty close to 3 K to me; that's goshdarn cold! Is the energy to warm it up by 40 K coming from the sun? Meteor impacts? Tidal forces? Radioactivity? Residual heat from the planet's formation?

                          In any case, expecting liquid water on Pluto still sounds pretty unreasonable.

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                          • #14
                            The temperature on the surface varies between about 33 K and 55 K depending on Pluto's distance from the sun (Pluto has a pretty elliptic orbit), so yeah, it's the sun that heats it. Add some tidal forces and the natural variance depending on local albedo, and one might get beyond 63 K in some places for the flowing nitrogen.

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                            • #15
                              It's fascinating to think that Pluto could have seasonal weather patterns even if it's just nitrogen (and perhaps the occasional hydrogen molecule) moving around.

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