Tuesday, May 7, 2019

Creation Moment 5/8/2019 - Virgil Fossae of Pluto

...by whom also he made the worlds; Hebrews 1:2

"Distant Pluto has no reason to be young. There are no forces known to make it active. Scientists expected a dead world until New Horizons flew past it in 2015. Ammonia “lava” has been found in one region, but it’s not the only site of relatively recent activity.
  • Because NH3 in its various forms is susceptible to destruction by UV photons and charged particles, its presence suggests emplacement on Pluto’s surface sometime in the past billion years.
  • In addition to the debouchment of cryolava along fault lines in Virgil Fossae, fountaining from one or more associated sites appears to have distributed a mantling layer covering a few thousand square kilometers.
Keep in mind that Pluto was expected to be 4.5 billion years old. Even if the cryovolcanism were a billion years old, that approaches the last 1/5th of the time Pluto was thought to exist. What happened in the other 4/5ths, such that volcanic activity turned on in the last 20% of its existence? Also, “sometime in the past billion years” could be far more recent; the speculative estimate is based on assumptions about the amount erupted and the rate of destruction."
CEH