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from the Gee-Mickey...-is-THAT-what-I'm-made-of? dept.
Pluto May Not Be a Planet, But It Could Be Made Out of Millions of Comets
Pluto may not be categorised as a planet any more, but it still holds plenty of fascination. For instance, how did the dwarf planet form, and why is it so different from the planets? By examining its chemical composition, researchers have come up with a new idea: Pluto is made of comets.
According to the currently accepted model, planets are formed by the gradual accretion of smaller objects - and Pluto, situated right next to the Kuiper Belt asteroid field, has long been thought to have formed the same way. So that part is nothing new.
But there are similarities between Pluto and Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko that scientists from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) believe may not be coincidental. In particular, the nitrogen-rich ice in Pluto's Sputnik Planitia.
[...] "We found an intriguing consistency between the estimated amount of nitrogen inside the glacier and the amount that would be expected if Pluto was formed by the agglomeration of roughly a billion comets or other Kuiper Belt objects similar in chemical composition to 67P, the comet explored by Rosetta."
Also at SwRI.
Primordial N2 provides a cosmochemical explanation for the existence of Sputnik Planitia, Pluto (DOI unknown, Journal Icarus) (arXiv)
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 25 2018, @05:47PM
The "demotion" was a political disaster, but I think it's appropriate to call them dwarf planets and keep the distinction as it currently is, if school kids still want to call the dwarf planet Pluto a planet, that's not so far off the mark. Now, if Nine, Ten and even Eleven and Twelve only pass into visibility rarely, less than once per orbit of Neptune, then they are: A) certainly worth knowing about, and B) possibly worthy of a distinct classification such as Wide Roving Planet or some such.
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