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posted by martyb on Sunday June 03 2018, @12:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the bet-they-don't-have-any-sandworms dept.

https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/science-environment-44317367

Scientists say they have found evidence of dunes of frozen methane on Pluto.

The research, which is published in the journal Science, suggests that the distant world is more dynamic than previously thought.

Pluto's atmosphere was believed to be too thin to create the features familiar in deserts on Earth.

The findings come from analysis of the startling images sent back by Nasa's New Horizons mission, which flew close to Pluto in July 2015.

The Register has a story with additional details:

Dunes of methane ice grains have been discovered on Pluto after scientists studied snaps taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. That's according to a paper published in the journal Science today.

[...] “We knew that every solar system body with an atmosphere and a solid rocky surface has dunes on it, but we didn't know what we'd find on Pluto. It turns out that even though there is so little atmosphere, and the surface temperature is around -230 degrees Celsius (-382 Fahrenheit), we still get dunes forming,” said Matt Telfer, lead author of the paper and a lecturer in physical geography at the University of Plymouth.

Pluto is made of mostly nitrogen, methane, and carbon, with plenty of ice and rock. Telfer explained to The Register that the mixed nitrogen and methane ices get gently warmed by weak sunlight. Since nitrogen sublimates at a lower temperature, it gets turned into a gas first, creating an upwards pressure strong enough to lift the sand-sized grains of methane ice with it.

Next, once the icy particles are suspended, they are whisked away easily by Pluto’s winds and transported back to its surface forming dunes. “It is surprising, as it’s atmosphere is so thin - currently around 1/100,000th that of Earth - that it’s not easier to understand how there can be enough wind to move [the] grains,” Telfer told El Reg.

“On Earth, you need a certain strength of wind to release sand particles into the air, but winds that are 20 per cent weaker are [less] then[sic] sufficient to maintain transport. The considerably lower gravity of Pluto, and the extremely low atmospheric pressure, means the winds needed to maintain sediment transport can be a hundred times lower,” added Eric Parteli, co-author of the paper and a lecturer in Computational Geosciences at the University of Cologne.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 04 2018, @10:51AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 04 2018, @10:51AM (#688310)

    what else would you expect being so close to uranus