Pluto is a Planet!

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Profile Bob DeWoody
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Message 1694561 - Posted: 22 Jun 2015, 12:03:19 UTC

Common, maybe. Accessible for us to go to, not very likely.
Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.
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Message 1694631 - Posted: 22 Jun 2015, 17:01:22 UTC - in response to Message 1694378.  

Both Earth and Pluto have large moons, in proportion to their own diameters, which lie notably close to their primaries. In both cases this seems to be the result of a primordial collision with another sizable body.
It is sometimes suggested that that such a large moon is necessary for a stably rotating planet that could foster complex life, and further, that the collisions that produce such moons are rare.
As we have two apparent examples of such moon-planet parings in our own solar system, I submit that, on this basis, the conditions favorable for advanced forms of life in the universe need not be rare.

Neither Venus, nor Mars have a such large moons...though, they r still stable in their rotation! How so? :D
(rhetorical q)


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Profile William Rothamel
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Message 1694668 - Posted: 22 Jun 2015, 19:03:41 UTC - in response to Message 1694631.  

A stabilizing moon may just be one of perhaps two dozen conditions required for intelligent life to form and survive.
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Message 1694709 - Posted: 22 Jun 2015, 22:48:20 UTC - in response to Message 1694668.  
Last modified: 22 Jun 2015, 22:53:34 UTC

New Images.

New from NASA's New Horizons: Increasing Variety on Pluto's Close Approach Hemisphere, and a 'Dark Pole' on Charon

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft doesn’t pass Pluto until July 14 – but the mission team is making new discoveries as the piano-sized probe bears down on the Pluto system.

In a long series of images obtained by New Horizons’ telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) May 29-June 19, Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, appear to more than double in size. From this rapidly improving imagery, scientists on the New Horizons team have found that the “close approach hemisphere” on Pluto that New Horizons will fly over has the greatest variety of terrain types seen on the planet so far. They have also discovered that Charon has a “dark pole” – a mysterious dark region that forms a kind of anti-polar cap.

"This system is just amazing," said Alan Stern, New Horizons Principal Investigator, from the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. "The science team is just ecstatic with what we see on Pluto’s close approach hemisphere: Every terrain type we see on the planet—including both the brightest and darkest surface areas —are represented there, it’s a wonderland!

"And about Charon—wow—I don’t think anyone expected Charon to reveal a mystery like dark terrains at its pole," he continued. "Who ordered that?"

https://youtu.be/navsfeb19vI
Video link.



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Message 1694779 - Posted: 23 Jun 2015, 6:12:55 UTC - in response to Message 1694668.  

A stabilizing moon may just be one of perhaps two dozen conditions required for intelligent life to form and survive.

& u know that how?
how many star systems have u visited, to KNOW this!

or r u betting on 1/9 chances in this Solar system? ;)


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Message 1694814 - Posted: 23 Jun 2015, 9:14:06 UTC
Last modified: 23 Jun 2015, 9:15:41 UTC

Thanx for the update Lynn! 26 days, the countdown is running..
rOZZ
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Message 1694819 - Posted: 23 Jun 2015, 9:58:52 UTC - in response to Message 1694786.  

A stabilizing moon may just be one of perhaps two dozen conditions required for intelligent life to form and survive.

Without the moon we wouldn't have the tides, and the oceans wouldn't be as they are now. As we are supposed to have evolved from oceans onto dry land there may be something in that, although a bit tenuous at best I would have thought.

We are fairly sure now that life as we know it evolved on earth though amino acids and other building blocks, and for human beings the planet is in what we call the habitable zone. The habitable zone for ET's might be our Pluto or Uranus for all we know.

And that is the whole point isn't it, we just don't know, all we can do is to hypothesize upon the knowledge that we have, and the fact that all known life to us requires liquid water. But when we do so we fall into the trap of looking only for earth-like worlds where there might be ET's like us. Perhaps we should widen the search and look for places where giant slugs live in Methane oceans at -180C.

They might not build spaceships like we envisage them, but they might know some that do in their address book :-)

& maybe we need to call them on +ZBX area code? :D


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Message 1696068 - Posted: 26 Jun 2015, 23:07:27 UTC - in response to Message 1694819.  
Last modified: 26 Jun 2015, 23:09:29 UTC

Mysterious for now.

What Is Glittering at Pluto’s North Pole?

As the New Horizons spacecraft nears Pluto, more details are coming into view, and we are beginning to see surface features on the tiny world.
And that means we’ll see things that are … odd. Perhaps “as yet unexplained” is a better term, since we’re seeing these markings for the first time in human history. The press releases have been amazing, but the images released have been enlarged and processed in complex ways to bring out details.


Pictures of Pluto taken at 05:37:30 (left) and 30 seconds earlier (right), enlarged and contrast enhanced.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/06/25/pluto_north_pole_bright_spot_getting_clearer.html

@Julie, the countdown is running..
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Message 1696174 - Posted: 27 Jun 2015, 7:21:01 UTC

Bright spots are seen on Ceres by the Dawn spacecraft. We shall be seeing them from a lower altitude soon as Dawn lowers its orbit.
Tullio
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Message 1696187 - Posted: 27 Jun 2015, 8:30:41 UTC - in response to Message 1696180.  

Both Ceres and Pluto belong to the primitive part of the Planetary System. We might be in for some surprise.
Tullio
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Message 1696193 - Posted: 27 Jun 2015, 9:26:42 UTC - in response to Message 1696191.  

I've suggested a kind of natural nuclear fission reaction, like that found in Oklo, Gabon, 1972. Wait and see.
Tullio
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Message 1696684 - Posted: 29 Jun 2015, 7:48:49 UTC - in response to Message 1696068.  

Mysterious for now.

What Is Glittering at Pluto’s North Pole?

oh, no...not again!

I can see Yellow pages already! :D


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Message 1697285 - Posted: 1 Jul 2015, 10:01:01 UTC
Last modified: 1 Jul 2015, 10:01:55 UTC

A final correction has been made the New Horizons path to Pluto. It takes 9 hours to send a command to the spacecraft, so commnds must be sent in advance and stored in the computers to be executed at an exact moment.
Meanwhile the SOFIA 2.5 meters IR telescope aboard a 747SP modified jetliner has observed an occultation of a star by Pluto on June 29, which is important for the study of the Pluto atmosphere, which includes methane.
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Message 1697404 - Posted: 1 Jul 2015, 18:18:07 UTC - in response to Message 1697285.  

OMG!

New Horizons Update: Methane Detected; New Images of Pluto and Charon; Sunrise/Sunset Observations

Yes, there is methane on Pluto, and, no, it doesn’t come from cows. The infrared spectrometer on NASA’s Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft has detected frozen methane on Pluto’s surface; Earth-based astronomers first observed the chemical compound on Pluto in 1976.

“We already knew there was methane on Pluto, but these are our first detections,” said Will Grundy, the New Horizons Surface Composition team leader with the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. “Soon we will know if there are differences in the presence of methane ice from one part of Pluto to another.”

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-update-methane-detected-new-images-of-pluto-and-charon-sunrisesunset
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Message 1697456 - Posted: 1 Jul 2015, 21:25:00 UTC

Several recent images of Pluto show what looks like a huge crater, better than 1/2 of the planet's diameter. A dark ellipse, surrounded by a whitish rim are apparent, suggesting the contours of a crater, as seen from a low angle. An impact on this scale would very probably be enough to destroy Pluto's structure, erasing all traces of itself. If the better images that will be coming in over the next two weeks confirm that this feature is real, it may be necessary to devise another explanation for it.
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Message 1697756 - Posted: 2 Jul 2015, 15:29:43 UTC
Last modified: 2 Jul 2015, 15:34:13 UTC

On the opposite hemisphere of Pluto from the apparent huge crater, they've seen several dark, rounded areas, each of about the same size, equally spaced along the equator. The investigators are at a loss to explain these. Link below to an article with pictures of both the huge crater-like object, and the self-similar array of dark circles. Magnifying the images with your computer will help in seeing these features more clearly.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33369045
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Message 1697778 - Posted: 2 Jul 2015, 17:32:30 UTC - in response to Message 1697756.  

It's Thor's bowling ball !!
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Message 1697811 - Posted: 2 Jul 2015, 18:29:58 UTC - in response to Message 1697785.  
Last modified: 2 Jul 2015, 18:55:45 UTC

Thanks Michael, for the link :-)

BBC, pictures better than NASA.
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Message 1698115 - Posted: 3 Jul 2015, 12:15:27 UTC - in response to Message 1697778.  

It's Thor's bowling ball !!

American bowling ball has 3 holes...that is why we (man) love them! So similar...
;)


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Message 1698689 - Posted: 5 Jul 2015, 15:49:05 UTC

The New Horizons space probe nearing Pluto suffered a technical fault on Saturday. It is currently communicating with Earth, but is in safe mode, which means that no photography or other scientific work can be done at the moment. The mission team will analyze diagnostic data from the probe, to try to determine the nature of the problem. They hope to restore New Horizons to normal operations with a day or two, ahead of the Jul. 14th flyby of Pluto. Link to news article on this matter:
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/nasas-new-horizons-team-reviving-pluto-probe-after-anomaly-n386876
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