"When NASA’s New Horizons mission sped by Pluto and its moon Charon in 2015, it captured almost half of each world in incredible detail. Every pixel could capture features as small as 76 meters across on Pluto and 154 meters across on Charon.
...scientists were seeking marks left by some of the smallest objects in the Kuiper Belt. The sparse ring of icy rocks that edges our solar system may represent the primordial leftovers of planet formation.
But until now, scientists weren't sure how pristine these objects really were. In the March 1st Science, Kelsi Singer (Southwest Research Institute) and her colleagues tallied up the craters on a few of the older surfaces of Pluto and its moon, and their findings point to a Kuiper Belt that's been largely untouched since its earliest days.
But what Singer’s team found on Pluto and Charon was that craters less than a certain diameter — specifically, less than 13 kilometers (8 miles) across — were surprisingly scarce in number.
Geological processes such as cryovolcanism and glacial activity can't have simply smoothed out Pluto’s and Charon’s surfaces, the scientists say, because such resurfacing would have erased the bigger craters along with the small ones. There are no known processes that would preferentially erase the smaller craters, the team concludes.
What's more the crater counts for Pluto and Charon are in line with similar studies of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn: Small craters are likewise lacking on these moons.
If there are few kilometer-size objects out there then that might mean the Kuiper Belt is so sparse that objects haven’t spent too many of the past 4 billion years running into each other.
Collisions, after all, typically create many small things out of a few big things. And if collisions have been relatively rare, then what we see out there now is what was there initially. That is, the Kuiper Belt would represent the solar system pretty much as it existed during its formation.
If the Kuiper Belt has remained pristine since its earliest days,......................."....yes, IF....could also mean it's earliest days are A LOT MORE RECENT, s ay a few thousand years....rather than millions or billions...just a thought...by whom also he made the worlds;
Hebrews 1:2
...scientists were seeking marks left by some of the smallest objects in the Kuiper Belt. The sparse ring of icy rocks that edges our solar system may represent the primordial leftovers of planet formation.
But until now, scientists weren't sure how pristine these objects really were. In the March 1st Science, Kelsi Singer (Southwest Research Institute) and her colleagues tallied up the craters on a few of the older surfaces of Pluto and its moon, and their findings point to a Kuiper Belt that's been largely untouched since its earliest days.
But what Singer’s team found on Pluto and Charon was that craters less than a certain diameter — specifically, less than 13 kilometers (8 miles) across — were surprisingly scarce in number.
Geological processes such as cryovolcanism and glacial activity can't have simply smoothed out Pluto’s and Charon’s surfaces, the scientists say, because such resurfacing would have erased the bigger craters along with the small ones. There are no known processes that would preferentially erase the smaller craters, the team concludes.
What's more the crater counts for Pluto and Charon are in line with similar studies of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn: Small craters are likewise lacking on these moons.
If there are few kilometer-size objects out there then that might mean the Kuiper Belt is so sparse that objects haven’t spent too many of the past 4 billion years running into each other.
Collisions, after all, typically create many small things out of a few big things. And if collisions have been relatively rare, then what we see out there now is what was there initially. That is, the Kuiper Belt would represent the solar system pretty much as it existed during its formation.
If the Kuiper Belt has remained pristine since its earliest days,......................."....yes, IF....could also mean it's earliest days are A LOT MORE RECENT, s ay a few thousand years....rather than millions or billions...just a thought...by whom also he made the worlds;
Hebrews 1:2
