Pluto May Actually Be A ‘Giant Comet,’ New Study Suggests

Double post

originally posted by: stormcell

originally posted by: wylekat
a reply to: TinySickTears

the result of a billion comets coming together.

This IS ATS, after all, and I gotta wonder- what would make a billion comets come together like that.

Our solar system has been formed from the remains of many earlier super-massive stars that went supernova, the remains of which then re coalesced to form the planets we know them today. The ultimate product of regular stellar fusion is iron, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen (the CNO cycle). During the actual supernova explosion all the heavy elements are formed. The internal structure of a star is layered with all these different elements. So when the star goes supernova, everything is going to get mixed up; oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and helium. Oxygen and hydrogen make water. Metals with the highest melting point are the first to cool down and solidify. All those liquids would solidify as well. Eventually gravity takes over and everything from that explosion would form an accretion disk where the planets form with the ice and dust rings elsewhere.

the result of a billion comets coming together.

They said Velikovsky was crazy! This sounds kind of fringe to me. Half of those astronomers still believe all comets are made of dirty snow. Or yellow snow, I'm not sure. They've come up with a lot of strange discoveries about Pluto this past year.

No one knows exactly how the solar system was formed. The idea of a big dust and debris cloud doesn't account for what we see. Why is Venus so different to the other planets? Why does Uranus rotate sideways? There is a good chance Pluto and some of the moons were captured bodies from outside the solar system.

Also, Pluto is a planet.

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: TinySickTears

I do wish they'd leave Pluto alone , constantly picking on it.

It's a planet , why can't they just admit they were wrong and restore its status.
#Pluto.

THANK YOU!!

originally posted by: wylekat
a reply to: TinySickTears

the result of a billion comets coming together.

This IS ATS, after all, and I gotta wonder- what would make a billion comets come together like that.

Secret Society meeting?

Can confirm. Pluto is a comet.

Uranus spit it out.

a reply to: TinySickTears

Such a cool idea.
Thanks.

originally posted by: wylekat
a reply to: TinySickTears

the result of a billion comets coming together.

This IS ATS, after all, and I gotta wonder- what would make a billion comets come together like that.

Well, back in the old days, the Greys from Zeta Reticuli had themselves a roundup. Comets are a good source of minerals and such. There were a lot of Galactic Credits to be made in driving a heard of comets back to civilization. (The Greys were capitalist 4 billion years ago.) All the good roundup sites had been depleted closer to home, so they had to travel all the way out here in the boondocks for some fresh stock.

So, a few million comet drovers and wranglers got together and road out here to the armpit of the galaxy to round up a good size herd of comets. They had a bunch of small spaceships with tractor beam lassos. And there was a great big ship that carried food and supplies. It was a Chuck Wagon Class Interstellar Spaceship, captained by a man named ϖ꜠ᶔᵳʑᵹԇԒ҉ӂѮЖɣ꜡ƿ¥ (roughly translated as Wishbone.)

Well, after a few thousand years, they had a good mess of comets to take back to Zeta Reticuli. So they were getting ready to drive the herd over the Sol-Terra trail when they got some bad news. The Galactic EPA had closed the trail! Apparently some bureaucrat had found some bugs living on the 3rd planet from the local star, and the government had established a game preserve to protect them. And being a government agency, they couldn't be satisfied with just protecting that one planet. The game preserve covered the entire solar system from the sun all the way out to the 8th planet!

Now the drovers needed to use the gravity of old Sol to get the herd moving, so they were stuck with a muster of fat comets with no way to move them. So the comet drovers went home empty handed.

But it didn't matter anyway. By the time they got back to Zeta Reticuli, their fellow Greys had developed dark-matter to baryonic-matter conversion technology that could replicate any kind of substance they desired just by tapping into the substrate of the universe.

Of course this crashed the galactic economy, and the home world was now completely socialist with universal basic income.

And that abandoned herd of wild comets finally settled down. Then all that gravity and secretion stuff started and Pluto was born.

That's my story, and I'm sticking with it...

I think I've been watching too much classic TV. I'm beginning to believe that Rawhide is a documentary.


-dex

a reply to: gortex

Because Eris is roughly the same size but more massive than Pluto. If Pluto's a planet, then so is Eris. And then there's Makemake and Haumea that are also close to Pluto's size.

Meet the Solar System's Dwarf Planets

a reply to: Illiberation

And after that, it will be known only as 'Mickey's dog' once again. That is after/if wwiii hits the planet, knowledge and common sense once again take a back seat.

Mickey Mouse award of Merit - Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Science 1933 in heels?



Stone age Mickey. He gets around doesn't he.

a reply to: TinySickTears

the result of a billion comets coming together.

It's like the bastard son of a thousand maniacs. The Freddy Krueger of our solar system.

a reply to: Planet teleX

Smallest planet, biggest comet, does it matter, none of us will ever get within a billion miles of it.

a reply to: wylekat

this might be fit for skunk works but they probably all came together (the comets) to fight the aliens that sent the space rock which killed the native Americans? I flunked history tho.

Its a big planet who was a big coment before then. Don't touch my planet Pluto please.

originally posted by: YouSir
a reply to: TinySickTears


Ummm...bull crap...it's a planet...got that...

PLANET...

I'd say Pluto-Charon is a double object -- or double something,most likely a double dwarf planet.

I say Pluto-Charon is a double object because Charon does not orbit Pluto, but rather Pluto and Charon both orbit a common point in space, like two ends of a spinning dumbbell. The four other known moons can be said to orbit around Pluto-Charon as a group -- generally around that same common point in space -- not just around Pluto.

I say it's a dwarf planet (not a major planet) because (1) it has a wildly tilted orbit, very unlike the rest of the planets, that takes it high above and below the ecliptic plane on which the rest of the planets general sit, and (2) the whole double-body system I mentioned above, and (3) if Pluto is considered to be a planet, then Eris should be a planet, since it is the same size as Pluto. And maybe Haumea, Makemake, Quaoar, and Sedna, too. In fact, it is thought that Pluto, Eris, Haumea, Makemake, Quaoar, and Sedna are not uniquely large for Kuiper belt objects, and other similarly-sized objects (some think hundreds of them) exist out there waiting to be discovered....

...And If Pluto and Eris are planets, then these other (potentially hundreds) of objects would also be planets. Considering all of this, I think it makes sense that since they are different enough from the 8 known major planets that they should have their own category of dwarf planet.

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People
You and Neil deGrasse Tyson...making the little kids cry.

originally posted by: enlightenedservant
a reply to: gortex

Because Eris is roughly the same size but more massive than Pluto. If Pluto's a planet, then so is Eris. And then there's Makemake and Haumea that are also close to Pluto's size.

Meet the Solar System's Dwarf Planets

That's right, they either had to promote some other objects, or demote Pluto. Apparently they didn't want to promote the other objects because of rationale like Soylent mentioned, so here we are, little kids are crying.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur
That's right, they either had to promote some other objects, or demote Pluto. Apparently they didn't want to promote the other objects because of rationale like Soylent mentioned, so here we are, little kids are crying.

It was in fact the discovery of what would have been the tenth planet in 2005 (Eris) that prompted that International Astronomical Union in 2006 to create the new classification of 'Dwarf Planet", which would include Pluto and the just-discovered Eris.

So, yeah -- the irony is that discovering the potential tenth planet is what directly led to there being only eight known major planets.


Mike Brown of Cal Tech was the one who discovered Eris, and he would have been poised to be forever known as the discoverer of the tenth planet, by he himself feels that neither Eris nor Pluto should be planets.

Mike Brown, by the way might still get to be the discoverer of a planet. He and his colleague Konstantin Batygin are the ones who noticed the eccentricities in the orbits of some Kuiper belt objects and have hypothesized that another large planet lurks out there somewhere -- the hypothesized "Planet Nine" that has been in the news over the past few years. Brown and Batygin calculated where the orbit of Planet Nine might be, and they (among others) are actively searching for it.

Here's a good summary article on Mike Brown, why he is known as "Pluto Killer", and his new quest for Planet Nine.

Meet Mike Brown: Pluto Killer and the Man who Brought us Planet 9

a reply to: DexterRiley

I just wanted to let you know that someone appreciated the history lesson. Star for you.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

That's right, they either had to promote some other objects, or demote Pluto. Apparently they didn't want to promote the other objects because of rationale like Soylent mentioned, so here we are, little kids are crying.

I don't understand the backlash anyway. People are complaining & kids are supposedly crying because something they learned in grade school had to be changed due to new discoveries? That's just weird, selective outrage.

There are already several moons like Ganymede, Europa, and Earth's Moon that are bigger than Pluto, and they're not considered "planets" either strictly because of the current definition of "planet". In fact, this link (HERE) shows that there are 7 objects that we classify as "moons" that are all larger than the wannabe planet Pluto (and 2 of them are larger than the "planet" Mercury - how's that for logic?). So the discovery of other Pluto-sized objects & the change in the definition of "planet" shouldn't be an issue.

If anything, people should be thrilled that so many more large objects have been discovered in our solar system. And hopefully within the next 20 years or so, the discoveries will keep coming and this discussion will be irrelevant.

a reply to: DictionaryOfExcuses

I just wanted to let you know that someone appreciated the history lesson. Star for you.

Thanks. I'm glad someone enjoyed my manic ranting short story.


I threw in a little political satire to make it bit more fun.

this might be fit for skunk works but they probably all came together (the comets) to fight the aliens that sent the space rock which killed the native Americans? I flunked history tho.

Sounds like a good start to a follow up history lesson. Supposedly non-living matter can evolve over the course of a few billion years to yield a self-aware sentient life form. It happened to humans, why couldn't it happen to comets?


-dex

a reply to: DexterRiley

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Collab!!!!!