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----------------- - 1829 - Dwarf Planets and Asteroids.
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- July 14, 2015 New Horizons spacecraft in its closest encounter to Pluto found a very thin atmosphere, 1/100,000th the surface pressure of Earth’s. The image was of an atmosphere laced with haze divided into a dozen layers. The theory is that nitrogen, methane, and possibly carbon monoxide circulates from the surface into the air and back again.
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- There were nitrogen glaciers sliding down craggy mountains like water ice would do. The sea of ices also appear to be a mix of nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide. The temperature is so cold that ice, liquid, and gas can coexist. The temperature point is called the “triple point” where temperature / pressure allow all three states to exist at the same time. The result is that the ices have the consistency of tooth paste.
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- No wonder there are so few craters. The dynamic ices are flowing, churning, evaporating over decade time scales.
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- Craters are covered by squishy, sluggish, oceans of frozen gases. These oceans are evaporating from the surface in a process called sublimation. Evaporation at -390 F, Amazing!
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- Pluto has greatly exceeded expectations with its diversity of land forms and environmental processes.
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- The solid nitrogen ice layer may be up to a few miles thick. Evaporation of this nitrogen ice and condensation on higher surrounding terrain leads to glacial flow-back toward the basins.
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- The solar wind is still traveling 900,000 miles per hour when it reaches Pluto. Pluto’s out-flowing atmosphere provides a source of neutral atoms that can exchange electrons with the Solar Wind’s charged oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen atoms.
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- New Horizon spacecraft has imaged the surface of Pluto with a resolution down to 1,050 feet. The average temperature is -240C and our Sun appears as a bright star in the dark sky. The flyby occurred at 31,000 miles per hour. The flyby witnessed mountains that went 13,000 feet high and canyons that were 6 miles deep.
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- Pluto does not have a water-rain cycle, it has a nitrogen ice-liquid cycle. Nitrogen gas frozen to a liquid is heated and cooled as the plant rotates on its axis.
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- Pluto is not cold and dead as expected. On the contrary it is geologically active. There is possibly heat coming from an underground ocean of radioactive elements.
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- Pluto is 18% the diameter of Earth. It is 0.22% the mass of Earth. Average density is 2.05 g/cm^3 compared to Earth‘s 5.52 g/cm. Pluto‘s orbit takes 248 years.-
- Charon is a moon of Pluto that is 40% its size
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- Charon has a surface of frozen ammonia, (NH3). It has reddish colored ices along the north pole region. Charon is 754 miles in diameter, compared to Pluto’s 1,442 miles diameter. Charon is orbiting 12,179 miles from Pluto. Our Moon is at 239,000 miles. Charon orbits every 6.39 days. Density is 1.6 g/cm^3.
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- When the Rosetta spacecraft visited the Comet 67P , August 2014, it found a surface of permanent water ice. The comet is 2.4 miles diameter covered in a dark dust. It reflects only a few percent of the sunlight.
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- There is no doubt that these smaller bodies in our Solar System of 8 planets had a lot to do with he evolution on Earth. The Moon was formed after a giant collision with a Dwarf Planet 4.3 billion years ago. The asteroid that hit the Yucatan 65 million years ago wiped out 30 to 50% of the species on Earth, including 100% of the dinosaurs.
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- Today we can still worry about possible cosmic bombardment coming from the asteroid belt orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, or, the Oort Cloud of comets orbiting beyond Neptune.
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- Most of the cratering on the Moon is dated 3.5 billion years at the oldest to 1.2 billion years at the youngest.
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- The Oort Cloud host millions of bodies of ice and rock in tenuous orbits. Any gravitational disturbance could hurl these comets towards us. This gravitational disturbance is most likely to occur when our Solar System passes through the disk of the Galaxy. This cycle repeats itself ever 28 to 32 million years.
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- Our Solar System is much more that a Sun and 8 planets. In fact , it is the smaller Dwarf Planets, asteroids, and comets that have had the most impact on the evolution of life on Earth. Stay tuned, an announcement will be made shortly.
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- Request these Reviews to learn more:
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- #1769 - When is the next asteroid going to hit Earth?
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- #1580 - Asteroids the bricks that built the Solar System. In 2013 there were 551,621 registered asteroids. Ceres is the biggest at 620 miles in diameter.
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- #1554 - Asteroids and meteorites are fossils with stories.
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- #1429 - There is an asteroid heading right towards us.
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- #1375 - There is an asteroid following us. Earth and the asteroid share the same orbit around the Sun.
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- #1309 - Vesta and Ceres get a visitor, the Dawn spacecraft.
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- #1296 - When an asteroid hit Manson, Iowa.
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- #1265 - This asteroid missed us, but , what if? June 27, 2011.
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- #1315 - How do asteroids and planets evolve?
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- #1193 - Asteroid to hit mother Earth.
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- #1825 - Asteroids responsible for evolution on Earth?
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----- 707-536-3272 ---------------------- Thursday, February 18, 2016 -----
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