"Pluto has terrain like no other world, leaving scientists perplexed;
Enceladus’ activity is also inexplicable for “geologic time”.
More images of Pluto just came down from New Horizons on the 24th. Audible gasps come from the scientists, and from anyone seeing them for the first time. Most eye-catching of all is this “snakeskin” image of Pluto looking toward the terminator:
What is that?” planetary scientist Barbara Cohen gasped, according to Nature News.
Other high-resolution images show apparent mountain tops protruding through vast, featureless plains of Sputnik Planum—yet the plains show corrugations suggestive of sublimation or wind erosion. At a larger scale, segments of the plains have polygonal edges suggestive of either convection or rotation of blocks then re-freezing. The highest-resolution image yet reveals “features that resemble dunes, the older shoreline of a shrinking glacial ice lake, and fractured, angular water ice mountains with sheer cliffs.”
The ridges in the “snakeskin” are tens of kilometers long, “giant features,” Nature says, running in parallel and covered with rust-colored material. Could wind have formed such features?
A new methane map has created a chicken-and-egg problem, NASA says; some places, like Sputnik Planum, have abundant methane, but the mountains and other areas have none.
These see the works of the LORD, and his wonders... Psalm 107:24
More images of Pluto just came down from New Horizons on the 24th. Audible gasps come from the scientists, and from anyone seeing them for the first time. Most eye-catching of all is this “snakeskin” image of Pluto looking toward the terminator:
What is that?” planetary scientist Barbara Cohen gasped, according to Nature News.
Other high-resolution images show apparent mountain tops protruding through vast, featureless plains of Sputnik Planum—yet the plains show corrugations suggestive of sublimation or wind erosion. At a larger scale, segments of the plains have polygonal edges suggestive of either convection or rotation of blocks then re-freezing. The highest-resolution image yet reveals “features that resemble dunes, the older shoreline of a shrinking glacial ice lake, and fractured, angular water ice mountains with sheer cliffs.”
The ridges in the “snakeskin” are tens of kilometers long, “giant features,” Nature says, running in parallel and covered with rust-colored material. Could wind have formed such features?
So far, Pluto has turned out to be strikingly active for an icy world 5 billion kilometres from the Sun. Nitrogen glaciers swirl around the base of towering mountains that are held up by the sheer rigidity of ice at about −235 °C, 38 degrees above absolute zero.
The distribution of methane across the surface is anything but simple, with higher concentrations
on bright plains and crater rims, but usually none in the centers of craters or darker regions. Outside of Sputnik Planum, methane ice appears to favor brighter areas, but scientists aren’t sure if that’s because methane is more likely to condense there or that its condensation brightens those regions.
The poor scientists were already reeling from September 10th’s photos and data. There’s a bit of a good-news, bad-news story in another Space.com article. The good news is that scientists have explained Charon’s red north pole: it’s material escaping from Pluto’s atmosphere. The bad news is that Pluto’s atmosphere is finite and can’t keep painting Charon for billions of years." CEHThese see the works of the LORD, and his wonders... Psalm 107:24
