More Surprises From Pluto!

recent discoveries say that pluto may be a comet because it has an atmosphere composed of methane gas and nitrogen. At first assumed to be about 100km thick, it was later estimated to extend out about 1500km. the gas would expand as it comes closer to the sun than freeze when it is farther from the sun. the Hubble Space Telescoperevealed varying patterns of dark and light areas on Pluto’s surface – possibly caused by the thawing of frozen areas that shift and reveal lighter surface material below. so it may be a comet after all.

www.universetoday.com... this is very interesting we have to find out more in 2015.

reply to post by alex1


its a big thing out there, does it really matter what we call it?
does Pluto affect out daily life at all? ever?

it's a dwarf planet but they say it has a feature of a comet and it only matters to pluto fans or there are people who want to know more more about it.

One would think that any heating of Pluto would not be from the sun due to its eccentric orbit as it is so far out and close to absolute zero that its large close moon would be a better hypothesis of any kind of active tidal tectonic heating in its own system. It really doesn't come much closer to the sun than its furthest, this sounds ridiculous.

What of its orbital period do we know?

I mean rotational period, how fast does it spin if its not tidally locked to the sun, which one would think as very doubtful.

reply to post by freedish


Yes, as the farthest body away from earth, it's highly representative of someplace we'd rather be!
I have a spot in my heart for Pluto. Flight could free us above the grasping powers that live on our world too.

Pluto has a moon Charon. I've never heard of a comet that has it's own moon. Comets aren't suppose to have magnetic properties on that level.

The current studies tell us that Pluto is made up of a mixture of rocks and several kinds of ices. Scientists believe that most of the ices that make up Pluto are frozen methane and ammonia.

like i meant it as in it acts like a comet.

I stand corrected.... Pluto has 3 moons it seems.
www.sciencephoto.com...

I've definitely never heard of a comet with 3 moons.... and why don't we ever hear about these "new moons" discovered around Pluto by Hubble?

Any space buff can tell you off the bat that pluto has 3 moons, it just isnt reported in news because not many other people care

reply to post by TheDebunkMachine


Well I'm a space buff but I don't keep up to date on the moon counts that often. How many moons does Jupiter and Saturn have? I don't think anyone has the accurate number correct as it changes all the time. They've added like 80 more to Jupiter in the past 25 years.
All I can say for sure is that we only know what they allow us to know about these objects.

reply to post by JibbyJedi


Gas giants are harder to keep track of because of their huge gravitational pull, but its still possible, Jupiter has 63 confirmed and named moons, Saturn has 62 confirmed and named moons. Neptune has 13, and Uranus has 27.

reply to post by TheDebunkMachine


Pluto has 3 so far we know, and when we get closer we may find more. This stands to reason as the further out from the sun planets get that their own gravity would trump the gravitational force from the sun, not just because the gas giants are so large that have so many moons, it might just be because the gravitational fields so far removed from the sun's allows outer planets to hijack would be sun orbiters, even little Pluto. We do know of several asteroids with orbiting debris called their moons.

This could be caused from leftover debris after the solar accretion when things were hotter, and collisions more frequent that fused to larger bodies. After things cooled the bodies stayed whole until collisions, which will occur given an amount of time beyond our sun's lifespan. But Charon is sort of puzzling. Which is why I can't wait to see if we can analyze if its creation is from a collision like our moon if we have those kinds of sensors on New Horizons, which I would guess they do, in fact I would guess its one of the prime directives of the mission.

reply to post by Illustronic


The easiest way to find out if charon is from a collision is to look at the composition of both bodies, if they are very similar/ the same , than it would stand to reason that charon is from a collision,

reply to post by TheDebunkMachine


Not that simple, as our own moon proves to have a very different composition than earth, which further backs up the idea of a collision genesis, when one digs further from the surface. But Pluto may not present the problem earth does with recycling its surface due to tidal heat and active tectonic plate movement, which may not be present on Pluto so far out in the cold, unless its large close moon interacts to create gravitational tectonic heat in their local system. Like Io from Jupiter. Extreme idea yes but the mass relationship of Pluto and Charon is closer than any other moon/planet in our solar system. Something that I think about that may be total bunk. I'm just throwing darts.

reply to post by alex1

Very interesting I think.

Here's a question. What defines a comet?
The old accepted and outdated answer is that comets are dirty snowballs originating from the outer solar system and are leftover debris from the formation of the planets in this system.

Are comets dirty snowballs?
What has been discovered of comets is that almost no water in any form can be found. Out of the few comets we have actually took close up samples/data from almost no ice can be found (less than 5%). So dirty snowball is not a fair description.

What about originating from the outer solar system?
I take this to mean that this is where they originally formed, in the frigid regions of the Oort cloud. Evidence from comet Wild2 show that this is not the case, at least with this comet. The samples that were collected from this comet and brought back to Earth indicate the composition was made in high temperatures (1000° F) and not in the frigid Oort cloud.

Are comets leftover debris from our early forming solar system?
I say given the track record of our old definition of comets the chances are good we got this one wrong too. Some comets might very well be leftovers but I have a feeling that most all are not. I don't think there is any real evidence either way but there is enough evidence to show that what we previously thought comets were is completely wrong.

So what are comets?
Comets are very dark, often potato shaped rocks (various compositions probably including water) that spend most of their time in the Oort cloud. When they come in close to the Sun an interaction with this body and the Sun's solar wind cause a tail to form at around 2-5 AU's distance. The difference between an asteroid and a comet are with the tail and the orbital characteristics (comets come from the Oort cloud asteroids do not).

Due to our definition of planets and comets I would say that Pluto is a planet but I would not argue that it may have 'comet like' features.

One thing that defines a comet is a highly elliptical orbit around the sun by a body with a diameter of around 3 km up to 50 km usually with a lot of frozen H, O, N, He, and C, and other light gases which define their difference from solid rock metallic asteroids, with less lighter elements left.

Comets approach the sun much closer than asteroids so there is where the heating comes from, not to mention the extreme speed the sun's gravity swirls them around then, comets are traveling faster than asteroids, due to their extreme orbits.

Some asteroids can be 10 times the size of the largest comets.

We have many meteorite samples on earth, zero from comets, so you know the geology is much more fragile on comets than asteroids, yes they are largely frozen lighter gas and dust, while asteroids are hard bound metallic dead rocks, even the tiny pebbles.

A big comet impact threat is largely due to its speed, and not its geology, an asteroid at a comet's speed on impact would be much more devastating to life on earth, given the same physical size.

Comets deteriorate in orbit, asteroids do not unless they collide.