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posted by martyb on Friday May 25 2018, @01:38PM   Printer-friendly
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)


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 25 2018, @01:43PM (14 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday May 25 2018, @01:43PM (#684002)

    Are they really looking inside Pluto, or just at the surface evidence?

    It would seem rather inevitable that the surface of Pluto is covered with comet impacts which don't boil off...

    For that matter it seems like the Earth may be 2/3 covered with comet impact residue, too.

    --
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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @05:33PM (13 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @05:33PM (#684091)

      They say comets come from the Oort cloud, but the Oort cloud has never been verified as actually existing.

      They say sometimes comets must have "slow" impacts that allow them to form peanut shapes with an extended next between the 2 bodies, yet they also say the Oort cloud is so vast (being at such a great radius from the Sun), that no comet ever gets even as close to another comet as the Earth gets to the Sun.

      So, now, they've just gone all in: BILLIONS of commets of have come together to form Pluto.

      Electric Universe. Look it up.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @06:19PM (12 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @06:19PM (#684122)

        Just because the whole comet theory is flimsy doesn't mean the electric universe ideas are correct. Personally I do like that group because they actually critique the mainstream stuff rather than the usual credulous parroting we see. The eu theories are interesting but that isn't so important to me.

        • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 25 2018, @06:26PM (11 children)

          by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday May 25 2018, @06:26PM (#684128) Journal

          Sympathetic to contrarian bullshit, what a surprise.

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          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @06:38PM (9 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @06:38PM (#684134)

            Well, I came across the comet issues during the Rosetta mission. They constructed the Philae lander with "ice screws" based on the assumption the surface would have the consistency of ice, it didn't:

            There were three methods to secure it after landing: ice screws, harpoons and a small thruster. The ice screws were designed with relatively soft material in mind, but Agilkia turned out to be very hard and they did not penetrate the surface.

            http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/11/12/rosetta-and-philae-one-year-since-landing-on-a-comet/ [esa.int]

            So when actually trying to apply conclusions drawn from the comet theory to the real world it failed epically. I'm sure now they are saying something like "our theory also allows for non-icy surfaces". However, just that they made engineering decisions based on it tells you the "icy surface" idea was no minor thing. I'm sure the engineers involved are pissed at the scientists about this.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @07:00PM (8 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @07:00PM (#684147)

              From the "Thunderbolts Project" [youtube.com].

              On that channel, there are numerous other such videos about comets, which I highly recommend, if only for entertainment. Come on! Don't be afraid to try on new ideas.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @07:55PM (7 children)

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @07:55PM (#684174)

                I'm not really interested in trying to learn from youtube videos. More like:

                At the site of the last touchdown of Philae on the nucleus, there was an attempt to intrude the MUPUS probe into the surface material. No noticeable intrusion was achieved, leading to an estimate for the minimum compressive strength of the material at ≥4 MPa. This is a fairly high strength, at least an order of magnitude greater than the typical value for snow (Fig. 6). Apparently, this is evidence of the presence at this site of highly porous ice with grains “frozen” at contacts, which may be due to the fact that this place is very poorly illuminated by the Sun and ice here may formed as a result of bringing into this dark and, therefore, very cold place the products of sublimation of volatile components from sunlit areas.

                https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134%2FS0038094616040018 [springer.com]

                So they've come up with a save. They landed in an exceptional spot on the comet... Lets see what was predicted beforehand by the comet theory:

                When designing Philae, engineering models for the comet surface properties covered a range for the compressive strength between 60 kPa and 2 MPa [7].

                https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0027/17d6faf2eabd8f20c39ba824f1fd95ba9640.pdf [semanticscholar.org]

                compressive strength is about one order of magnitude higher than tensile strength
                [...]
                From the discussion above the conclusion can be drawn that the cometary surface on meter scales has a reason able lower limit of the tensile strength of the order of 1 kPa whereas the probable upper limit can be taken as 100 kPa. The lower limit of tensile strength corresponds to a compressive strength of > 7 kPa.

                https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576509001684 [sciencedirect.com]

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @08:13PM (6 children)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @08:13PM (#684187)

                  Whatevs, bro.

                  I guess you never visit Wikipedia, either.

                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @08:32PM (4 children)

                    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @08:32PM (#684195)

                    I visit wikipedia all the time. I also watch "educational" stuff on youtube all the time, usually to go to sleep (yes I have watched electric universe stuff for that purpose). The bandwidth of video and lectures is just too slow for me, I need to be able to skip around and get the details I care about in the order I want.

                    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @08:54PM (3 children)

                      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @08:54PM (#684207)

                      Next time, just say "Also, here is some textual information with citations."

                      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @09:05PM (2 children)

                        by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @09:05PM (#684214)

                        Nope. I really did want you to know that some people do not like learning from youtube videos. So if you can put the information in a more suitable format it would be much more likely to spread.

                        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @10:21PM (1 child)

                          by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @10:21PM (#684243)

                          It's shockingly terrible.

                          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @11:18PM

                            by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @11:18PM (#684261)

                            I took this advice last year and it fucked me up. Ill never do that again.

                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @12:09PM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @12:09PM (#684485)

                    YouTube is a horrible abomination. Educational material should be delivered in textual form, not buring behind 10 minutes of hemming and hawing and taking gross amounts of bandwidth for the information presented. I hate video for all purposes except porn and funny shit. Fuck your YouTube links, give me good clean text.

          • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @06:45PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @06:45PM (#684139)

            A "contrarian" is someone who takes the opposing side in a debate because he thinks it's fun.

            However, fringe theorists are not necessarily contrarians; they are pursuing objective reality by not only theorizing, but also by experimenting—if their ideas are wrong, they abandon those ideas, rather than say "Well, I guess it's dark matter!".

            Now compare these 2 points of view:

            • The large scale universe is governed solely by the weakest force, gravity.

            • The large scale universe is also shaped by one of the strongest forces, electromagnetism.

            Guess what, the Universe is filled with plasma, and electromagnetic phenomena are known in the maintream to scale from the very small to the very large (no upper limit, so far). So, stick with just your gravity, and try to explain everything with collisions and accretion and "dark matter" (i.e., the epicycles of Mars), or try theorizing and experimenting with more phenomena in your chest of tools.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by realDonaldTrump on Friday May 25 2018, @02:10PM (22 children)

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Friday May 25 2018, @02:10PM (#684015) Homepage Journal

    A dwarf athlete is an athlete. A dwarf actor is an actor. A dwarf prostitute is a prostitute. As everybody knows. But this article says a dwarf planet isn't "categorised as" a planet. Folks, that's "categorised as" DUMB!!

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Friday May 25 2018, @02:30PM (16 children)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 25 2018, @02:30PM (#684022)

      A trans man is a ... yeah got ya there.

      Its just height-ism. When astronomers talk about the criteria of "clearing the neighborhood" thats really a codeword for banging THOTs, ya know, planetary style, and if Pluto is too dwarf-ish-ly short per red pill theory to bang THOTs well ship some vidya game systems out on the next space probe because NEET Pluto is going to be an incel beta orbiter dwarf planet, just too short to get chicks. Wikipedia claims alpha planet Jupiter has 69 moons, no kidding about the "69" giggle giggle giggle. Blue pill people say the radiation environment by Jupiter is too toxic and that red spot tattoo is toxic male masculinity, but chicks love a bad boy and that alpha male planet is banging so many satellites it must be hard to remember all the names, I think at this point his plates just have numbers not even names, now he's squirting intense electromagnetic radiation on the face of satellite #24, that's hot. Sure Pluto is beta orbiting Charon but she's so fat she's almost as big as him, and Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra don't count because they're under age and Pluto is getting none of that. Also Hydra looks like a fat chick I saw at Walmart. Pluto, total beta orbiter. Even guys who can't get dates and look thru telescopes all night won't respect him.

      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 25 2018, @02:40PM (15 children)

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday May 25 2018, @02:40PM (#684027)

        The problem with dwarf planets is that there are just too many of them. If you call them planets, that's like calling all female mammals women.

        When Pluto was discovered, we had no idea how many Kuiper objects there were. Now that we are starting to know, we can either "draw an arbitrary line in the ice" that Pluto is the smallest planet and accept that there are possibly dozens more "planets" out there, or accept all Kuiper belt and asteriod belt objects in solar orbit as planets and push up the number of "planets" into the tens of thousands.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Friday May 25 2018, @03:03PM (5 children)

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 25 2018, @03:03PM (#684040)

          If you call them planets, that's like calling all female mammals women.

          That's kinda the point of the whole anti-pluto thing where if you focus on personal identity I suppose it matters, but if you're just trying to accomplish a general goal, in context its kinda, "sheep, woman, whatever".

          Without looking it up off the top of my head there's that Hawaiian Goddess named planet thats numerically bordering on being more of a planet than Pluto is, on an individual identity basis its a big deal to fight about, but as a general goal of calculating spaceship trajectories or planning a colony, none of that matters to the general goal. Does it have all the historical cultural baggage of humans identifying it a planet, or is it a convenient big round ball of resources in space to be used regardless what its called?

          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 25 2018, @03:17PM (2 children)

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday May 25 2018, @03:17PM (#684045)

            People get worked up when stuff they were taught in elementary school changes.

            If they would pay attention, lots more than "what is a planet" has changed.

            --
            🌻🌻 [google.com]
          • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday May 25 2018, @11:07PM (1 child)

            by bzipitidoo (4388) on Friday May 25 2018, @11:07PM (#684256) Journal

            Seriously, it seems a major reason for this discrimination against Pluto is fear of having to count higher than 10. Might confuse the public, oh noes! A simple, easy definition is that if the body orbits a star, and it has sufficient mass to form into a spherical shape under its own gravity, and has done so, then it is a planet. With that definition, our solar system could have dozens of planets, including Pluto, Ceres, Eris, and the other spherical bodies we've found so far in the Kuiper belt. Charon should also be considered a planet. In contrast, Triton is not a planet, but only because it orbits Neptune.

            The criteria astronomers came up with to exclude Pluto and the rest of the dwarfs seem too contrived. It depends too much on location. Any terrestrial planet in Pluto's orbit would be disqualified. If Neptune wasn't present, Pluto would be planet. Worse, it's not hard to come up with scenarios in which the planetary status of a large body continually changes, fluctuating between planet and dwarf planet over a matter of days. If the hypothesized Mars sized planet Theia was in Earth's orbit, were neither Theia nor Earth planets until they collided? We don't do the same thing with moons. The definition of a moon is actually much more liberal. It doesn't even have to be round to count as a moon. Somehow it's okay for Jupiter to have 69 moons, but not for the sun to have lots of planets. If we want to say the solar system has only 8 planets (or 9, if the hypothesis of the existence a Planet 9 is correct), then maybe Jupiter has only 4 moons.

            Pluto's status has another political dimension most may not be aware of. It is the only planet discovered by the US. Some would like to reduce its status just to slight America. On the other hand, counting Pluto as a planet was motivated in part to honor America.

            • (Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday May 26 2018, @04:20PM

              by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Saturday May 26 2018, @04:20PM (#684572)

              We haven't found many objects "on the border" of gravitational speherical-ness but there's a lot of objects right on the border of gravitationally clearing their lane, which leads to a lot of foolishness about this asteroid is almost a planet but this planet is now merely an asteroid and WTF.

              I kinda like my economic definition that gets no respect; is it round and a likely place for a future colony's main space travel destination, then its a planet. So if you have space liners stopping at pluto, then local transit to Charon then its a planet. Kinda like island chains on the Earth.

        • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday May 25 2018, @04:52PM (6 children)

          by bob_super (1357) on Friday May 25 2018, @04:52PM (#684082)

          There will soon be 4 billion women. Do you propose we rename all but 8 of them to not-Joes-females, to make your inventory easier ?

          • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 25 2018, @05:44PM (5 children)

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday May 25 2018, @05:44PM (#684099)

            But there are trillions of female mammals, if we let them all be called women it might lead to some inappropriate behavior. It was a riff on the "dwarf prostitutes are still prostitutes", why yes, yes they are, but there aren't more dwarf prostitutes than regular prostitutes, certainly not more by orders of magnitude, so calling dwarf prostitutes prostitutes doesn't dilute the term so much.

            --
            🌻🌻 [google.com]
            • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Friday May 25 2018, @05:55PM (4 children)

              by bob_super (1357) on Friday May 25 2018, @05:55PM (#684109)

              1) Hydrostatic equilibrium (mostly round)
              2) Orbits star

              Yup, maybe thousand of them. Why do we care?
              8 are special because of where they are, but calling every single other one "dwarf" is totally arbitrary. Pluto and Eris are half the diameter of Mercury, which is tiny compared to Jupiter.

        • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 25 2018, @05:38PM (1 child)

          by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday May 25 2018, @05:38PM (#684095) Journal

          The problem with dwarf planets is that there are just too many of them.

          This argument seems less compelling each time I see it. If we end up with a thousand gravitationally rounded planets in our solar system, just don't require kids to learn all of their names (sorry Eris, Orcus, Sedna, Quaoar, Makemake, Salacia...)

          Still, the expansion of the solar system "planets" list may be inevitable now that there is indirect evidence of a Neptune-like Nine [wikipedia.org] and Mars-like Ten [arizona.edu].

          --
          [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
          • (Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 25 2018, @05:47PM

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday May 25 2018, @05:47PM (#684102)

            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.

            --
            🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @02:32PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @02:32PM (#684023)

      Enough with the DUMB comets already!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @02:33PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @02:33PM (#684024)

      Absolutely! It's as dumb as an orange president not categorized as orange, right?

      (I have a strange feeling I' misplaced a comma in the above)

    • (Score: 2) by dry on Saturday May 26 2018, @04:29AM (2 children)

      by dry (223) on Saturday May 26 2018, @04:29AM (#684362) Journal

      Yes, and a Guinea Pig is a pig.

      • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:01AM (1 child)

        by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:01AM (#684368) Homepage Journal

        I'm no fan of political correctness. As everyone knows. But that's a VERY disrespectful choice of words. And it's BAD JUDGEMENT. I'm from New York. And we've had some very fine and brave Italian officers on the NYPD. Joe Petrosino, killed by the Black Hand. Because the Sun blew his cover!!

        • (Score: 2, Funny) by dry on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:23AM

          by dry (223) on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:23AM (#684369) Journal

          You do know that a Guinea is a unit of money, previously in gold, so a guinea pig is a golden pig. Don't see how that is political incorrect or anything to do with Italians.

  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday May 25 2018, @02:42PM (4 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 25 2018, @02:42PM (#684030) Journal

    Pluto is made of comets, that much I got it already.
    Now, question is... what made up the comets?

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday May 25 2018, @03:33PM

      by RS3 (6367) on Friday May 25 2018, @03:33PM (#684053)

      Comet molecules?

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday May 25 2018, @05:14PM (2 children)

      by bob_super (1357) on Friday May 25 2018, @05:14PM (#684087)

      It's comets all the way down, man!
      Just find some manga about snowball fights, there's bound to be one, and the hero will definitely power-up to throwing snowballs with perfect double-comet tails, while his opponent rages up and counters with millions of micro-comets, and the best friend clumsily attacks with giant ancient comets...

      • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @06:21PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @06:21PM (#684123)

        This model of pluto's formation is also consistent with the data.

      • (Score: 3, Funny) by Freeman on Friday May 25 2018, @06:25PM

        by Freeman (732) on Friday May 25 2018, @06:25PM (#684127) Journal

        I've seen worse plot lines.

        --
        Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
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