Strange Ice Fields Of Pluto

Also heard to be on the lookout for any venting or geysers or something.

I read they found geysers on Triton after some days/weeks. Back then the images were also much poorer and there were many other limitations. They culdn't store data on the spacecraft nearly as easily.

Pluto is supposed to be tied somewhat to Triton and Titan in different ways. Here's an article goes int omore details:
www.space.com - Pluto Flyby May Reveal Secrets of Saturn's Moon Titan
...

Just googled this:
news.sciencemag.org - Potential geysers spotted on Pluto...

Here's an interesting article pondering how Pluto has such a young surface:
news.sciencemag.org - Pluto is alive—but where is the heat coming from?...

What I got from that was:
1) The impact which created the pluto-charon duo is more recent
2) A water-ammonia mixture
3) Something else or additionally is responsible for what's observed

A UMSF forum member ZLDoyle created this approximately true colour mosaic which includes the "ice fields" and the area from the first Pluto close-up we saw, with the mountains : i.imgur.com...



Enhanced colours: i.imgur.com...

a reply to: Thorneblood

Yea....science fiction is just for kids. Cute.

You twisted my point there, Pluto.

The fiction about pluto alien bases is best reserved for the kind of fiction thread you want to put that in, not a science investigation.

You couldn't wait to start clogging this one, though. Fresh terrain, right? Be the first to see turtle rocks on Pluto!

a reply to: wildespace

The black vertical lines in the "ice fields", center, center left and bottom in your image look like the black deposits from geysers on other moons like Triton.

originally posted by: Char-Lee
a reply to: intrptr

No life detected…

Yet

No life detected? What about Earth?

Thats enough for me. The Universe is full of life.

If I was Intergalactic Johnny apple seed, I'd ignore all the lifeless bits of rock and sow the "goldilocks zone" planets. Billions of those around somewhere.

Why bother with lifeless frozen rock? It would be a waste of precious seed.

when will we have pictures of the plutonians?

a reply to: eriktheawful

It looks exacly like ice cream when you leave it out of the fridge too long and then put it back in at the last minute. COULD PLUTO BE MADE OF ICE CREAM?

a reply to: jonnywhite

I believe it had been suggested in the past that their might be pools or rivers of liquid neon on Pluto.

Kind of wild to think about that.

originally posted by: intrptr

originally posted by: Char-Lee
a reply to: intrptr

No life detected…

Yet

No life detected? What about Earth?

Thats enough for me. The Universe is full of life.

If I was Intergalactic Johnny apple seed, I'd ignore all the lifeless bits of rock and sow the "goldilocks zone" planets. Billions of those around somewhere.

Why bother with lifeless frozen rock? It would be a waste of precious seed.

Fuel source?

Science info on the beginnings of that planetary system?

ETA: one of my favorite ideas is science fiction, which is a relay station for FTL: it has to be far enough away from the star's gravity field to work.

a reply to: eriktheawful

Fuel source?

Well… I can only speculate, based on limited 'real world' evidence…

Bob Whites UFO artifact (spent fuel?)

But to play along with the SF realm… (say a starship, ark, Johnny Apple Seed (of Terraform Inc.) :

Any deceleration into a suns gravity field to visit planets requires enormous fuel and time to decelerate, match orbits, land, take off, etc.

It takes even more to do that twice. Why waste energy, go directly for the planet you want to terraform. Allready mapped as good for life, the mission is planned and stores required are loaded.

They would just go there and not waste time and fuel visiting other planets in-system that can't support life.

Terraform inc. is very busy. Most planets being sown with life require multiple visits over many eons, first tweaking atmosphere, second starting greenhouses and farms, then spreading the life around so it maintains a hold.

Then revisits to monitor and re tweak, being sure there are no risks of ELE.

Back and forth… is that why all the witnessed events around river mouths, cities, and missile silos?


Now if the fuel requirements for an even bigger ship were necessary, say the Titanic of Terraform Inc,. flagships…

Then they could harvest any amount of material for fuel and life support from minor moons. Like Miranda for instance, It looks like some giant excavator plowed row after row of trenches, gouging huge amounts of material from the surface… maybe on more than one occasion?

You be the judge

Miranda is a moon of Uranus, far enough out for a communication out post maybe, too?

a reply to: intrptr

Again: all pure speculation.

However, it could be that their interstellar drives that are FTL can not operate close to major gravity wells, stars, gas or ice giants, etc. (ala Larry Niven's hyperspace), and you may need fuel sources for your interplanetary drives that are available through resources of much smaller objects in the Kuiper Belt.

Or say something like the Mass Effect games. The Mass Effect relays are located at the outer edges of star systems, presumably because they do not work closer in.

Maybe they use some sort of wormhole technology, and it would be too dangerous to open one up further into a star system.

All guesses on my part, but it is fun to speculate!

Meh. It's a big cold rock. I suppose we had to send a probe. On reflection, NASA needed a more general purpose probe to probe multiple Kuiper Belt objects. It's too far to go for just one object. Yeah, I know they plan to visit one or two more objects. But exploring that far out requires a more cost-effective approach. It's too far to go for so little. Either make the probes cheaper or make 'em do more.

The only eyebrow raiser is that the surface of Pluto is 'young'. It contains no craters. Why? I suppose a comparatively recent cataclysmic event could have melted ice etc to produce this effect. Or tidal effects with Charon. Charon's less pockmarked than expected too. That's could be due to less bodies in its region to hit it.

Apart from that, no surprises, but it has to be done, but more cost-effectively.

a reply to: ScreenBogey

Actually, New Horizons got to Pluto cheaply. The mission cost was 700 million dollars. The original plan to get to Pluto (known as the Pluto Kuiper Express was going to cost over a billion dollars before the plan was scrapped.

The Galileo space probe that went to Jupiter to study it and it's moons cost 1.4 billion dollars.

Cassini that went to Saturn cost 2.6 billion from the US, 500 million from the ESA, and 150 million from the ASI.

Curiosity driving around on Mars cost 2.5 billion dollars.

I'd say we got to Pluto (with visits to other kuiper belt objects over the next 3 to 4 years) pretty cheaply compared to other missions.

originally posted by: ZeroFurrbone
Pluto is planet so. What do you expect. Not an huge asteroid or dwarf something . Who says planets have to be big and close to the sun.... As long as its something that goes around it is a planet.

It´s a very small planet by the way. Europe couldn't fit in it.

Btw, i really doubt anything alien will come out of it.

a reply to: eriktheawful

I'm waiting for someone here on ATS to start a "Pluto Anomalies" thread......then I can be doubly entertained!

I've found something interesting... Maybe a thread in the next week

Here's an animated flyover of Pluto’s Icy Mountain and Plains released by NASA.

This simulated flyover of Pluto’s Norgay Montes (Norgay Mountains) and Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain) was created from New Horizons closest-approach images. Norgay Montes have been informally named for Tenzing Norgay, one of the first two humans to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Sputnik Planum is informally named for Earth’s first artificial satellite. The images were acquired by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager

a reply to: eriktheawful

The real picture of Pluto's flyby that nasa don't want us to see

a reply to: Havenofear31

The real picture of Pluto's flyby that nasa don't want us to see

If NASA don't want us to see it where is that picture from ? , it's NASA receiving and releasing the pictures.

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance

originally posted by: eriktheawful
I've got a feeling that I'm going to be royally entertained over the next year or so by constant new images of this distant world.

That makes two of us.

i thought it was just a fly past, a year?

Original nasa flyby