Evidence supports 'hot start' scenario and early ocean formation on Pluto (SD)
The accretion of new material during Pluto's formation may have generated enough heat to create a liquid ocean that has persisted beneath an icy crust to the present day, despite the dwarf planet's orbit far from the sun in the cold outer reaches of the solar system.
This "hot start" scenario, presented in a paper published June 22 in Nature Geoscience [DOI: 10.1038/s41561-020-0595-0] [DX], contrasts with the traditional view of Pluto's origins as a ball of frozen ice and rock in which radioactive decay could have eventually generated enough heat to melt the ice and form a subsurface ocean.
[...] The researchers calculated that if Pluto formed over a period of less that 30,000 years, then it would have started out hot. If, instead, accretion took place over a few million years, a hot start would only be possible if large impactors buried their energy deep beneath the surface.
The new findings imply that other large Kuiper belt objects probably also started out hot and could have had early oceans. These oceans could persist to the present day in the largest objects, such as the dwarf planets Eris and Makemake.
Previously:
Pluto's 'Heart' Sheds Light On Possible Buried Ocean
Subsurface Ocean Could Explain Pluto's "Heart" Feature Aligning with Charon
Pluto Has an Underground Ocean Kept Warm by a Layer of Gassy Ice
Related Stories
A giant asteroid impact in the dwarf planet's past offers new insights into the possibility of an ocean beneath its surface.
Ever since NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto last year, evidence has been mounting that the dwarf planet may have a liquid ocean beneath its icy shell. Now, by modeling the impact dynamics that created a massive crater on Pluto's surface, a team of researchers has made a new estimate of how thick that liquid layer might be.
The study, led by Brown University geologist Brandon Johnson and published in Geophysical Research Letters, finds a high likelihood that there's more than 100 kilometers of liquid water beneath Pluto's surface. The research also offers a clue about the composition of that ocean, suggesting that it likely has a salt content similar to that of the Dead Sea.
Europa, Mars, Enceladus, Titan, and now...Pluto? Scientists who search for extra-terrestrial life focus on the presence of liquid water (or hydrocarbons, in the case of Titan), so the list of potential sites in the solar system is growing.
Pluto may have a massive subsurface ocean under its heart-shaped region, Sputnik Planitia, aligned with Pluto's tidally-locked satellite Charon:
Pluto may harbour a slushy water ocean beneath its most prominent surface feature, known as the "heart". This could explain why part of the heart-shaped region - called Sputnik Planitia - is locked in alignment with Pluto's largest moon Charon. A viscous ocean beneath the icy crust could have acted as a heavy, irregular mass that rolled Pluto over, so that Sputnik Planitia was facing the moon.
[...] Sputnik Planitia is a circular region in the heart's left "ventricle" and is aligned almost exactly opposite Charon. In addition, Pluto and Charon are tidally locked, which results in Pluto and Charon always showing the same face to each other.
"If you were to draw a line from the centre of Pluto's moon Charon through Pluto, it would come out on the other side, almost right through Sputnik Planitia. That line is what we call the tidal axis" said James Keane, from the University of Arizona, co-author of one of a pair of papers published on the subject in Nature journal. This is strongly suggestive of a particular evolutionary course for Pluto. The researchers contend that Sputnik Planitia formed somewhere else on Pluto and then dragged the entire dwarf planet over - by as much as 60 degrees - relative to its spin axis.
Also at UCSC.
Reorientation of Sputnik Planitia implies a subsurface ocean on Pluto (DOI: 10.1038/nature20148) (DX)
Previously: New Horizons Finishes Sending 2015 Flyby Data
We think that Pluto is hiding a liquid ocean, but why it hasn't frozen is a big mystery. Now it seems that gas trapped inside the bottom layer of its icy outer shell may be keeping it warm.
...
The layer would be made out of a material called a gas hydrate, which occurs when gas molecules get trapped between frozen water molecules. "It's not bubbles, it's a little microscopic cage for keeping gas atoms in," says Nimmo. "It doesn't look very different from regular ice, but it's got all that gas in there."Gas hydrates are much better insulators than water ice, so the researchers calculated that this extra layer could keep the ocean around and maintain the ice shell as we see it now. This may help explain why Pluto's tenuous atmosphere has lots of nitrogen but almost no methane – it's much easier for methane to get caught in a gas hydrate and kept underground.
Perhaps we should send our climate-harming cows to Pluto...
Also at ScienceAlert and Space.com.
Pluto's ocean is capped and insulated by gas hydrates (DOI: 10.1038/s41561-019-0369-8) (DX)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @09:49PM (9 children)
Who cares about some piece of rock on the other side of the universe.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @10:13PM (7 children)
Must be a pretty big rock if it's on the other side of the universe. The telescope to see it must be fucking gargantuan.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @11:09PM (6 children)
Pay no mind. Probably a Republican anti-vax geocentric flat-earther, whose concept of distance is as small as the Precedent's hands.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RandomFactor on Thursday June 25 2020, @12:27AM (5 children)
https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/childhood-vaccination-programs-should-be-exempt-political-bias [precisionvaccinations.com]
"In 2015, the Pew Research Center conducted a survey of 2 thousand adults which concluded about 12 percent of liberals and 10 percent of conservatives believed that childhood vaccines are unsafe."
Anti-Vaxx sentiment is a very weak indicator of political affiliation.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday June 25 2020, @12:44AM (3 children)
We do have an A/C who pushes flat earth and anti-vaxx sentiments occasionally, as well as what might be termed "conservative" views.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2020, @12:55AM
I'd guess that being anti-vax correlates well with
a. Parents of children who have some condition which someone claimed could be caused by vaccines
b. Nutjobs
No reason to look for a partisan bent, denial and crazy exist everywhere.
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Thursday June 25 2020, @02:42AM (1 child)
"Flat-earthers are evenly distributed across the political aisle" [insider.com]
It's been a thing for millennia to associate groups with differing political views with the dumb, ivory tower, uneducated, never worked a real job, morally bankrupt, etc. The whole process starts with a fallacy, assuming because some (large or small) percentage of Group X has some attribute therefore that attribute applies to all in Group X. It is then possible to denigrate and dismiss whatever individual's view is undesirable to the one engaging in the fallacy because they are in Group X.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday June 25 2020, @02:52AM
I can accept that, but was trying to make the point that our flat earther seems to be on the conservative side.
Political views aside, flat earth is a stupid position to take, as is being anti-vaxx.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2020, @01:59AM
On the other hand, it's a very strong indicator of ignorance.
(Score: 2) by Kitsune008 on Thursday June 25 2020, @12:14AM
Go back to school, you ignorant git.
It's NOT on the 'other side of the universe', it's IN our own solar system.
And as for being 'some piece of rock', I think Pluto qualifies as being something more than that.
And thankfully, the world does not care about your opinion...only you care about your opinion...I do not.
I, for one, care about new knowledge of rocks, whether they are in our solar system, across the universe, or in between. Especially a trajectory that intersects Earth orbit.
Hopefully for your sake, one of those rocks you don't care about, falls from the sky onto your head.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @11:00PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2020, @02:57AM
Add one more job for the Neptune probe.
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=20/06/22/186251 [soylentnews.org]
Lazy probe ain’t stop’n at Neptune anyway, might as well get some more work out of it