Pluto: ice mountains. Water. NOT a featureless cue ball…
by CJ | Jul 16, 2015 | Journal | 36 comments
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Reading some of the articles I have to wonder how they define heat. It seems to little non-scientist me that it should be defined as anything over absolute zero.
Who they? Reporters or scientists?
From what I read, both. I’ve been reading BBC.
Not to get too Zen, but you must first define the difference between ‘Heat’ and ‘Temperature.’
Heat (engineering/scientific term is ‘Q’) is the total energy of molecular motion inside an object. Temperature (engineering/scientific term is ‘T’, usually in degrees absolute, i.e. wrt absolute zero) is a measure of the average thermal energy in a substance.
The two are related, of course; in any substance they are related by a parameter (i.e. property of the substance) known as specific heat. I don’t know how to use math symbols here, but in words, the change of total heat (Q) of an object is the temperature change “delta T” (in degrees absolute) times the specific heat ‘c’, times the mass ‘m’ of the substance. “Delta Q equals mcdeltaT.”
Or, “the temperature of a substance changes when heat flows into it or out of it.”
Simple, huh? 😀
For some really cool Pluto stuff, check out Emily Lakdawalla’s blog at The Planetary Society (planetary dot org).
exicitong to see the last “first look” mission. I’ve been lucky enough to see them all. looking forward to the news as it trickles in.
Best cartoon about Pluto.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/matt/?cartoon=11742806&cc=11644969
Thanks, I saved it…
Thank you! Made my bad day much better. :snicker: Great cartoon. Saved it.
And interstellar space is full of Bucky Balls, C60+! 😯
I remember in college when the idea of BBs would have gotten one laughed out of class.
And the New Horizon spacecraft is bearing Clyde Tombaugh’s ashes. That was such a perfect tribute.
And no impact craters to speak of. The ice out there has to be really durable. Ice-9, anyone?
There are a few craters; astronomers are threatening to name them after Star Trek characters 🙂
Do you remember Hal Clement’s “Mission of Gravity? He went into some of the “strange” behaviors of ammonia-water clathrates.
So is this Pluto or arctic permafrost polygons on earth?
Image
Now it appears they are going for themes of darkness: Mordor, Cthulhu, and a few deities with underworld connotations. Mountains of Madness, anyone? Leng Plateau?
They did name the heart-shaped feature after Tombaugh, which was a nice nod.
D’oh! Sniped by PJ!
Animated Flyover of Pluto’s Icy Mountain and Plains
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydU-YrG_INk
“This simulated flyover of Pluto’s Norgay Montes (Norgay Mountains) and Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain) was created from New Horizons closest-approach images. Norgay Montes have been informally named for Tenzing Norgay, one of the first two humans to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Sputnik Planum is informally named for Earth’s first artificial satellite. The images were acquired by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14 from a distance of 48,000 miles (77,000 kilometers). Features as small as a half-mile (1 kilometer) across are visible. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI”
they names the area of the ‘heart’ Tombaugh Regio.
Jane made a very interesting observation: that it’s possible Pluto’s lack of impact craters is the scarcity of impactors in the outer solar system. IE, the closer you get to the sun, the more concentrated the supply of impactors, and the more likely a large body is to get repeatedly impacted. ‘Out there’ the concentration is less, and the speed may also be less, since even comets move slowly at first, then gather speed as they infall the sun. The climb out is equally sluggish as a comet returns to deep space.
There is one well known fact and one hypothesis there.
The first is Newton’s Law of Gravitation, seen in Kepler’s Second Law. The greater the distance, the less the “motive force” of gravitation by an Inverse Square Law. But let’s be clear that she is considering solar attraction. There will also be attractions between Kuiper Belt objects themselves. And this time there is a cube of distances involved.
If, for a BOTE calculation, we take the Kuiper belt to be spherical(*) between 35AU and 50AU, then that shell is a volume of ~47 cubic AU, isn’t it? So even if the distribution is not uniform, because of orbital resonance, the Kuiper Belt object are distributed in a monstrous volume of space, i.e. there’s a great distance between them with that inverse square acting.
The second hypothesizes a consequence of the Late Heavy Bombardment. It seems to have finished nearly 4BYO, so that’s a lot of time for “resurfacing”.
(*) Long ago the primordial disk would have been planar, but “out of plane” near misses added vertical components to orbits, taking it from planar to toroidal, and further development would have slowly turned the toroid into a speherical shell.
Because most of the outer solar system objects that would create an impact crater seem to be accelerated by Jupiter’s influence, would it be possible that the impacts just aren’t sufficiently energetic enough to create a large crater on Pluto? Jupiter’s gravitational pull can accelerate an object sufficiently to either impact an inner planet (or our Moon) with sufficient energy, or it can accelerate that object back out of the inner solar system and the chances of it impacting Pluto are vanishingly small, anyway.
Just a thought…
From the images I’ve seen it appears Charon (It bothers me everybody is pronouncing is as if the name of the character in Greek mythology was spelled with a sigma, “Sharon”! It’s chi, /ˈkɛərɒn/ or /ˈkɛərən/; Greek Χάρων. Get it right, people!) is “large” and close to Pluto. I think tidal heating is responsible for the smooth polygonal surface.
Tangential to the upcoming anniversary of the manned moon landing:
Robby has a new third adventure after all, posted today in the Toy Box Tales.
http://www.shinyfiction.com/toybox/
For those following along, you may notice hints at a few plot threads starting to emerge.
I have some idea where this is going and how it connects to Augie’s adventures, but I am still discovering what’s going on behind the scenes with Robby and Augie. I need to sit down and plan ahead more.
Yes, Robby’s adventures are more kid-friendly, but I think Augie’s are more teen SF&F, and ideally, I’m aiming for something all ages can enjoy. Augie and crew may occasionally run into something more serious or darker in themes, but Robby will be lighter, while still (I hope) tackling real world things along with the imaginative, light-hearted stuff.
I am still getting the hang of how to do this as an illustrated story versus a photostory. As a photostory, it hasn’t reached its potential yet. I’m still learning.
I’ll be interested to see if people start to pick up on what is, or might be, going on in the larger story. Enjoy!
D’awww! As opposed to LGM, maybe Robby’s speed is more like a tribble?
LOL! I don’t ~think~ he knows about tribbles and flatcats yet, or he’d already….
Heheheh, that’s a great idea! (I have never seen a stuffed flatcat….)
Tribbles… David Gerrold’s site might sell ’em. They used to be common. If I google for tribbles, will I break teh interwebz?
Yes, they’d definitely be his speed. 😀
(Not much luck so far finding a Hawaiian tropical shirt for the little guy. You’d think they’d be easy to find.)
@BCS. The question “Who’s Jacob, whom Robbie loves?” immediately made me think of Cat Jacob, a cartoonish cat in stories by Sven Hartman and Thomas Härtner. Ik have two books with the heavily illustrated stories of his little real-life adventures.
There’s even a German-language website devoted to the stories and pictures of Cat Jacob: https://kater-jacob.de/index.php?menuid=1
They’re the kind of stories I’d think a little boy would like to have read to him, told from the cat’s viewpoint, with the young cat discovering his world, acting silly, or getting in trouble and needing to be rescued by ‘his human’.
Jacob is a lot less cynical than Garfield, and the stories are gentler and generally kind and mildly humorous.
The other idea I had was that maybe it was the name of a favorite uncle or grandpa or big brother or cousin, who bought the shirt for him.
That looks quite likely for a young boy recently arrived from Deutschland. Many countries have their local cats who get into trouble: Garfield, Simon’s Cat, Maru… We’ll see which way BCS wants to take the story 🙂
Wow! Thanks, Hanneke! — I have bookmarked that site. 😀 It will be good practice with basic German, too. Hmm, my print copy German book is temporarily not where it’s supposed to be, which I will find tonight. I see from the site’s page that I can make out more now, and then it gets advanced. I also see “bekommen” looks like a false cognate; I think the German meaning is different from the English “to become,” but they’re obviously the same origin.
It’s very likely Robby would read something like that and love it.
The little t-shirt he got is long, almost like a girl’s nightshirt tee. He looks slimmer in it, somehow. I laughed when the item popped up in a search, and after thinking about it, came back to it a couple of days later and got it.
I needed an explanation for why he’d already have this, but I haven’t decided quite yet. — I’d thought maybe he’d been given it from someone, or he had ended up with it from a friend or relative. But I haven’t yet decided who Jacob is and why this means so much to Robby. I’m considering whether Jacob could be a friend or relative; I hadn’t really thought of a dog or cat, but that’s a good possibility.
What I want from this, story-wise, is the idea that love has many related forms, the love of friendship, of family, and so on, and the connection between friendship and the love of a boyfriend or girlfriend.
Jacob may turn out to be a brother or cousin or other relative, family-love. (But if so, then wouldn’t “Ben” know that already, since he’s supposed to be a friend of Robby’s parents?)
Jacob could also be a good friend, a best friend, in which case, there’s the possibility to explore how friendship and love are connected, and whether Robby’s (or Jacob’s) feelings are more than friendship, ebbing into a boyfriend / partner kind of love. But I think that would be ambiguous at Robby’s age, and Robby wouldn’t really know himself that that was how he felt; it would be too amorphous, friendship shading into love, and Robby’s too young to know more than that he’d like and/or love his friend. (And “Jacob’s” feelings would enter into that too. Robby could feel one way and Jacob could feel another way, slightly differnt, both friends.)
I am leaning toward that one, but I am not sure yet. I do know that I’d want it to be subtle, because I don’t think Robby would know clearly at that age what his feelings are, where one begins and the other ends, how they shade into each other. As a boy somewhat older than Robby, I still didn’t know that I had what I think was a first puppy-love sort of crush on a best friend, but that’s definitely what it was.
I’ve also wanted to get at the idea that the expression of love and friendship differs from culture to culture. For example, in other countries, friends can hold hands or kiss each other’s cheek, and it’s considered normal and not romantic or sexual. It’s accepted. But in America, after a certain age, it isn’t, for boys; there’s a different standard for girls. But even these things differ over time. For example, what was considered very normal for dating and marriage only a couple of generations ago here would now be seen as inappropriate, usually. (An older and younger couple, for instance.) So I’m trying to be mindful of this.
I’m very aware that the majority American culture, especially here where I grew up, has some very troubling issues with this and inconsistencies, some of which are fairly recent but more severe than they used to be. I think it’s reached an unhealthy level that risks causing some of the problems that are feared, and that some things just should not be a concern anyway. Such as how we express what is very ordinary friendship and nurturing/socializing behavior, and healthy. Even that has become almost taboo at some levels. At the same time, in the majority American culture, there are also alternate currents where people believe that needs to change to a more open expression style, more accepting, for friendship and for love. Which set of ideas / beliefs / opinions wins, how they change to meet or oppose each other, determines how the overall culture changes, and if it remains healthy and viable, or becomes, well, emotionally / mentally unhealthy and unstable, with flaws that lead to social and interpersonal problems that affect two people or whole groups.
Hmm…. And that’s way more of an opinion on it than I’d intended to say, but that’s some of my thinking behind this.
Robby’s backstory: I have in mind some ideas for a plot arc for what’s going on that’s put Robby with a foster dad / guardian. And yes, it’s science fiction. Robby is young enough that he doesn’t know what’s going on, and his boundaries between reality and his imaginary world are sometimes iffy from other people’s perspective’s, even other kids. But that should give clues as I go. Further, Robby’s parents are American and so is Robby, though one parent might be German, and Robby has spent most of his life lately in Germany. He and his parents have lived elsewhere, though, mostly overseas. So even though Robby is American, he’s mostly international and mostly familiar with German and European culture, and with how American and English-speaking culture overlap internationally. So when he gets to America, he’s a fish out of water in what’s supposed to be his own “native” culture. Plus, his parents are gone, missing and presumed dead (or proven so) and so he’s been placed with a friend of the family as legal guardian and foster parent, but someone who hasn’t seen him in a long time, and who is not experienced as a parent of a young kid, though he has other experience.
That, and what I have in mind for a backstory, how that connects with the science fiction elements, and probably with Augie and his friends, I am still working out. I’ve got the basic ideas down, though.
Meanwhile, Robby (and his foster dad) get to deal with getting used to each other and the ordinary stuff of life for a boy like Robby, plus bits and pieces of what’s unique to Robby’s personality, and what’s going on in the overall science fiction story, should appear as I go.
Heh, somehow, so far, this is pulling together well, or in manageable chunks. I have in mind some things for Augie and crew too, and those are likely to fit an older (teen) group of friends and more varied, stronger subject matter. However, I don’t want to go as dark and troubled as two very different major SF TV series did. There may be things that get near another story-universe I have had in planning for a long while, but I think the Toy Box Tales are not likely to have a crossover or real overlap into there. More likely, they’ll only get somewhat near those.
I had originally thought the Toy Box Tales would be little spoofs and parodies, fun takes and homages to fandom and SF&F series (print and video and audio). I’d still like to do that. But somehow, the idea for this turned up, and was too good to pass up, for Augie and then for Robby. So, the Fanzone appeared recently. I want to come up with a series title (or two) for Robby’s adventures and for Augie’s adventures, but nothing has suggested itself yet. So I’m still going with the Toy Box Tales as the working title.
My budget is going to be very tight to non-existent after the new year or sooner, unless I can really get a lot more done after I get obligations and paperwork out of the way, and get through a likely move to somewhere smaller in town. Otherwise, I’d probably spin off the Toy Box Tales sub-site into its own website and blog. I don’t yet know if I’ll put the Toy Box Tales into ebooks or get to learn animation. No time right now to teach myself 3D computer animation, and my Inkscape skills are still rudimentary. (I still miss Macromedia Freehand very much.)
So…. Er, I have managed to hijack the thread with a very long post, not what I’d intended to do. (I’m copying it to put in some form on my site or blog, but getting very litle traffic there.)
It’s strange, but this seems to be pulling together into a cohesive story with a fuller plot, whereas the other story-universe I’ve ahd going has been sitting there lately. It keeps growing, but hasn’t made it into finished plots yet. So… We’ll see. Gosh, this is fun, though. 😀 I’m starting to see a more complete story arc for Robby and for Augie and their friends.
OT: I just read this New York Times article about the Cascadia subduction zone. It sounds very dengerous, and apparently it has a one in 3 to 10 chance of occurring in the next 50 years.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one
I hope you and the Briggses are high enough to be safe?
I really wonder at the lack of long-term large-scale plans to avert the worst consequences, if it’s this clear something like this has such a large chance of happening.
Over here, our water management authority raised their taxes a bit (gradually over the last decade), because projected sea-level rises in the next century or so would raise the risk of inundation to once in a thousand years; and this year they’ve upgraded the coastal protection so it’s back at the once in ten thousand years risk level.
Accepting a one-chance-in-ten over the next 50 years sounds a lot more unsafe than even the once-in-a-thousand-years risk which is deemed the minimum for the protection against smaller, less dangerous (and less costly) river inundations.
Is there no national disaster prevention organisation with enough power to get things done*, instead of just a fund for relief *after* lots of people have been killed by a disaster?
It seems a very inefficient way to tackle such large problems.
*Like our water authority, voted for by the inhabitants of the region for which it’s responsible, with larger property-owners (land and/or buildings) who have more at stake in an inundation getting more votes, and which raises its own tax to make sure it has enough money to do what needs to be done to keep people safe & dry, as flooding is our local most-likely natural disaster. It’s much less politicised, as the only thing it does is water management, and policy needs to be based on science and facts as everyone understands that wishful thinking and rhetoric won’t keep the water away. There’s discussion and voting when farmers’ interests and those of nature conservers collide, but everybody understands the bottom line, which is our own safety from the sea, as has been the goal of water authorities for several centuries.
I’ve been here over 20 years, and just yesterday got up the gumption to buy a cut-in-half 10′ 2×6 to attach to the studs in the garage wall behind the water heater, so’s I can strap it in. Mebbe that’ll matter if it ain’t a 9.
They NYT article has gotten lots of play, even if it’s been known about locally for better part of a decade.
(If you have updated that Gods-be egg-sucking 😉 Flash you might try this from a 2009 OPB Oregon Field Guide. Then there’s the Wikipedia page about our last Big One.
Remember that old TV show “Dark Angel”? Transfer their premise for the cause of the original catastrophe to a mundane thing like an earthquake, rather than genetic engineering, and it might be prophetic. 😉
We had a children’s book about a big quake that hit Cascadia. The main character was a young NA girl who was swept out to sea in a canoe, then returned on the crest of the tsunami, which lodged the canoe in the top of a tall cedar. She was thereafter gods-touched and able to predict quakes and tsunamis, which protected her tribe when European invaders came to loot. She warned her people of an impending tsunami, and they fled inland to safety, while the others’ ships were smashed by the giant wave. The timing might be about right for the large quake in 1700, although I am sure the author took poetic license.
I went out into the garage one day, when I was living in a rented house in East Pasadena, drilled holes in the shelves, and bolted them to the brackets they rested on – the brackets straddled the studs in the outside wall. Only problem was with the shelf that had a knot right where the hole needed to be. I figured it would help the next time things got really interesting. (I try to keep the large, heavy stuff on the bottom shelves.)
Cascadia is a hazard. We’re far enough here in SPokane, 300 miles from the coast, as is Patty, that we’re somewhat safer, though we do have our own little fault, rarely active.
Seattle, Ocean Shores, etc, are planning: smart building, reinforcement, and warning systems with tsunami evacuation routes.
But this is volcano country, and it is tectonically active: the face of Columbia gorge shows layer after layer of lava flows. We live on one. A really big quake might or might not set things off, but it’s something we all have to think about. Also possible is a set of smaller-scale adjustments that would do a lot of damage, but not as much as The Big One.
Have you been keeping up with studies of the Yellowstone super-volcano? I rather suspect you’d in range. 🙁
I saw something months ago that they’d CT-imaged its subterranean reservoirs, but I don’t have a recollection that there was a concomitant evaluation of future activity. 🙁
The last I read says they think the next eruption is more likely to be a small rather than large one but I haven’t followed their reasoning precisely. It may be statistical or it may have specific foundation.
Someone seems to be AWOL, or vewy, vewy quiet. 😉
For those of us interested in exoplanets, which seem to be everywhere (as SciFi authors have written about with abandon) and how such planetary systems can be so common, I found this.