Pluto has EVENLY spaced huge dark spots!

originally posted by: jonnywhite
I wonder if these dwarf planets and gas giants and moons will ever have value beyond scientific study or the search for life? Like to mine or colonize? I could see us possibly erecting settlements underground on our moon for various purposes, but on pluto or charon or other moons? Doubt it, unless it's merely sentimental.

Yes. Our planet has about a billion year or so to remain inhabitable, before the Sun grows too large and hot until the atmosphere is ruined and the oceans boil away. We will need to look for a new home. Whether that new home will be on one of those outer bodies, or even in a different system, we will have to explore the outer Solar System bodies for potential habitability when the Sun becomes a red giant.

So we're getting close now, and here's one of the latest images

www.slate.com...

What caught my eye was this on the right hand side:



The way light falls on it shows that is quite heavily cratered and uneven.

It's sad these're hte highest quality images we'll get :/

Or mabye they have the highest quality ones for later because of download lag?

Regarding the image above posted by onebigmonkey, the terrain seems ragged/fractured to me. That's the second spot, as shown here:
www.space.com/29912-pluto-dark-spots-final-photo.html

I think ti's more and more clear those "spots" have definition. They're not just black smooth surfaces. Definitely not lakes of liquid.

a reply to: wildespace

I thought it was about 5 billion years before the sun starts to expand and become a red giant?

The future of the sun

In approximately 5 billion years, the sun will begin the helium-burning process, turning into a red giant star. When it expands, its outer layers will consume Mercury and Venus, and reach Earth. Scientists are still debating whether or not our planet will be engulfed, or whether it will orbit dangerously close to the dimmer star. Either way, life as we know it on Earth will cease to exist.

The changing sun may provide hope to other planets, however. When stars morph into red giants, they change the habitable zones of their system. The habitable zone is the region where liquid water can exist, considered by most scientists to be the area ripe for life to evolve. Because a star remains a red giant for approximately a billion years, it may be possible for life to arise on bodies in the outer solar system, which will be closer to the sun.

The window of opportunity will only be open briefly, however. When the sun and other smaller stars shrinks back down to a white dwarf, the life-giving light will dissipate. And supernovae from larger stars could present other habitability issues.

www.space.com...

It's sad these are the highest quality images we'll get :/

This is nowhere near the highest quality of image that we will receive. However, the transmission rate for sending data back to Earth is very low, so it will take some time for the highest resolution images to arrive. This very low resolution version will have been sent so that the team have something to look at! Don't worry, the full resolution colour images of Pluto and Charon will look superb when we eventually get them!

a reply to: Darkblade71

It will get a lot warmer here on Earth before that so that will be a major problem for any life still around.

THESE PICS ARE AMAZING!!!

www.businessinsider.com...

Embedding it for all to see. God damn it, give it back it's planet title! To look at this from so far away... Astounding when you think of it.

originally posted by: jaffo
THESE PICS ARE AMAZING!!!

www.businessinsider.com...

Thanks much, I STILL cannot get any pics I add to the library on my account to post. (MODS?!) And yes, THAT is a PLANET!!!

I am rather disappointed to say the least that we will not be getting better quality images of the polygonal feature! That speaks volumes itself!

originally posted by: abeverage
I am rather disappointed to say the least that we will not be getting better quality images of the polygonal feature! That speaks volumes itself!

Well the closer you got to the, the less 'regular' they turned out to be.

You can't surely be suggesting that they timed it to avoid features they didn't know existed?

originally posted by: abeverage
Ok this has got me wondering what could cause these evenly spaced dark spots?!? And what are they? This is going to be very, very interesting I think!

Each of the spots is about 300 miles in diameter

WOW!...

There is a part of me that goes oh there will be an natural explanation...and then there is the part of me that is why I am on ATS.

pluto.jhuapl.edu...

I am going to laugh myself silly if there are claims of a camera artifact...

Like a huge bowling ball ..lol

originally posted by: abeverage
I am rather disappointed to say the least that we will not be getting better quality images of the polygonal feature! That speaks volumes itself!

How exactly does that "speak volumes?" For crying out loud just enjoy the show! The planet will have rotated and that side will not be visible when we pass. That is not a conspiracy, that is planetary physics. Jesus. . .

originally posted by: onebigmonkey

originally posted by: abeverage
I am rather disappointed to say the least that we will not be getting better quality images of the polygonal feature! That speaks volumes itself!

Well the closer you got to the, the less 'regular' they turned out to be.

You can't surely be suggesting that they timed it to avoid features they didn't know existed?

Right?! For crying out loud, some people are so negative!

a reply to: jaffo

I love these, thanks for posting. Evidence of snow of Pluto, awesome!

a reply to: abeverage

What intrigued me today, was the amount of publicly accessible suggestion regarding the amount of time it will take to:

1 - retrieve data
2 - scientists study the data
3 - data once studied released to the public

And yet ,the amount of media coverage is unprecedented here in the UK, in recent years anyway. I had a thought that this whole thing might be an exercise in dataset management & ad hoc theorising ,an attempt to nail down a response to any alien discovery with misinformation and disinformation (and outright denial/lies).

Pluto mission is Clementine on hyperdrive in terms of manipulating public perception of space research In the next few years, tech development will enable more and more people to witness what cannot be rationally explained away - is this a prelude to realtime 'perception adjustment' on the part of those who keep the secrets?

The balance of expectations, media coverage and convenient excuses for delays in presenting the data (& its interpretation) just seems a bit off, somehow. Hype feels artificial, it doesn't quite sit right somehow.

a reply to: FlyInTheOintment

Presumably if they made no press releases and said nothing about it you'd be screaming cover up right?

It's evidence those dark areas are indeed some kind of muck or dune or tar (possibly in some places). Days ago I wasn't sure if the information show in the dark spots was a compression artifact or not. Obviously, any lakes/rivers of liquid are already highly unlikely, given what we know of Pluto's average temperature and surface atmospheric pressure. But I was still unsure; I'm no planetary scientist to say the least. But I had seen the repeated reference to information being show in the spots as well which led me to believe it wasn't a liquid. The latest pics are dismantling any hopes these were lakes, at least in my mind. However, I read ice/frost has moved on Pluto's surface, have to wonder how? Wind? Slush? Erosion? And one must also wonder if Pluto once had liquid lakes or rivers long ago? It might be possible some of teh features we see on it today are the result of long lost liquids, sort of like hte canals we see on Mars. Maybe long ago it had enough atmosphere somehow? And we also must ask if there's any likliehood of liquids under its surface which might change the properties of what we see from space. And I'd not be surprised if liquids can temporarily exist in rare circumstances on Pluto... like if there's an imapct with a large body and other variables. But it's almost not worth mentioning.

Part of me just wnated to see a place which somewhat remsebles Earth. Titan is hte cloest one so far. Pluto had my hopes up that there'd be another place with surface liquids, but no. Have tob e happy with very limited liquids, sort of like the temporary liquids they say are on Mars but evapotrate/boil so fast it never forms a lake or river. Of course, Mars had some liquid seas a couple billions years ago. The pictures NASA created showed a barren landscape with some lakes and some faint clouds.

Is there any hope of seeing clouds on pluto? I don't know enough about atmospheric/planet science to know what's possible with Pluto's atmosphere. All I know is it's thin and tall and warmer above the surface. In most respects, it's a vacuum.

I've seen Pluto be phrased as an "airless titan". Why? I found this:
www.space.com - Pluto Flyby May Reveal Secrets of Saturn's Moon Titan...

With its nitrogen and methane atmosphere, Pluto bears a strong resemblance to Titan — one of the most potentially habitable bodies in the solar system — or at least how Titan may have been in the past.

"New Horizons will help us confirm our photochemical understanding [of] Pluto. Since the photochemistry is similar to Titan, it will help us understand the processes there, too," said Michael Wong, a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena who worked with Yuk Yung, also of Caltech, and Randy Gladstone, of the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, to study the possibilities of a frozen Titan.

Weaver pointed out that Pluto also bears a strong resemblance to Triton, a moon of Neptune, which he called "the closest analogue to Pluto." Triton was likely captured from the Kuiper Belt, a region of rocky, frozen objects beyond the orbit of Neptune that includes Pluto. Images taken by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft revealed a haze around Triton similar to the light haze around the dwarf planet.

So whenever you think of Pluto, try to think of Titan and Triton. Lol, funny how similar sounding Titan and Triton are.

originally posted by: FlyInTheOintment
a reply to: abeverage

What intrigued me today, was the amount of publicly accessible suggestion regarding the amount of time it will take to:

1 - retrieve data
2 - scientists study the data
3 - data once studied released to the public

And yet ,the amount of media coverage is unprecedented here in the UK, in recent years anyway. I had a thought that this whole thing might be an exercise in dataset management & ad hoc theorising ,an attempt to nail down a response to any alien discovery with misinformation and disinformation (and outright denial/lies).

Pluto mission is Clementine on hyperdrive in terms of manipulating public perception of space research In the next few years, tech development will enable more and more people to witness what cannot be rationally explained away - is this a prelude to realtime 'perception adjustment' on the part of those who keep the secrets?

The balance of expectations, media coverage and convenient excuses for delays in presenting the data (& its interpretation) just seems a bit off, somehow. Hype feels artificial, it doesn't quite sit right somehow.

See, this is the kind of stuff I just cannot stand on here, I'm sorry. The phrase "something just seems off" should be banished to the wilderness around these parts. For crying out loud this has been as open and wonderful a scientific voyage as you could hope for and yet here is the obligatory "Hmmmm...I don't know, something doesn't feel right" guy. What exactly does not feel right?! There have been ZERO "Excuses for not presenting data." The numbers and wherefores and timelines for processing data have been WIDE OPEN for the entire mission. And when the probe went down on approach. . . they brought it back up! Man, just enjoy the science and learn something, my friend!

We think we understand when the sun, will stop well, being the sun.. We are comparing how our sun is going to act, comparing it to stars millions if not billions or LIGHT years away....

We dunno...


I like to clarify that kind of scientific fact crap...


Reminds me when people thought the sun revolved around the earth.