Charon has Geysers too |
Charon has Geysers too |
Jul 18 2007, 04:08 PM
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#1
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Member Group: Members Posts: 531 Joined: 24-August 05 Member No.: 471 |
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The only mechanism that explained the data was cryovolcanism, the eruption of liquids and gases in an ultra-cold environment. This action could be occurring on timescales as short as a few hours or days, and at levels that would recoat Charon to a depth of one millimeter every 100,000 years. ---------- - Charon: An Ice Machine in the Ultimate Deep Freeze -------------------- - blue_scape / Nico -
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Jul 18 2007, 04:18 PM
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#2
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Administrator Group: Admin Posts: 5172 Joined: 4-August 05 From: Pasadena, CA, USA, Earth Member No.: 454 |
...I'm working on a story right now...type fast, Emily, type fast...
I can report now that there has been so much media interest in this that the first author on the paper, Jason Cook, had his email inbox fill up yesterday and start bouncing messages! --Emily -------------------- My website - My Patreon - @elakdawalla on Twitter - Please support unmannedspaceflight.com by donating here.
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Jul 18 2007, 05:42 PM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Moderator Posts: 3233 Joined: 11-February 04 From: Tucson, AZ Member No.: 23 |
Very interesting! Okay...so now I am confused. Occultation data suggests the presence of a large impact basin on Charon's leading hemisphere and now we see that there is geologic activity on this world. Maybe this moon is kinda like Dione, most an ancient surface with numerous fractures that penetrate down to some liquid water/ammonia pocket in the interior.
Hopefully, they can determine the likely longitudes for active locations. Maybe NH's trajectory can be adjusted to image these areas. -------------------- &@^^!% Jim! I'm a geologist, not a physicist!
The Gish Bar Times - A Blog all about Jupiter's Moon Io |
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Jul 18 2007, 06:00 PM
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#4
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2922 Joined: 14-February 06 From: Very close to the Pyrénées Mountains (France) Member No.: 682 |
We know there are Geysers on Triton, now Charon, so I guess Pluton is on the list too...
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Jul 18 2007, 08:32 PM
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#5
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Member Group: Members Posts: 809 Joined: 11-March 04 Member No.: 56 |
This is annoying:
QUOTE Charon is the companion world to Pluto (or one would say a moon of Pluto, except that Pluto is no longer considered to be a planet) Not because of any residual quarrel about Pluto, but because nobody has ever said that objects other than planets could not have moons (we speak of "asteroid moons" easily enough) and because the phrasing "companion world" is without either warrant or precedent. What is the Gemini Observatory up to here? |
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Jul 19 2007, 09:48 AM
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#6
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8784 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
From Emily's excellent article (way to fly those fingers, E, and nice job on the illustration, Doug!):
"The possibility is raised," Cook and coauthors write, "that there is more liquid water in the Kuiper belt than on Earth." What else can be said but <clink> ? -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Jul 19 2007, 10:26 AM
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#7
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14432 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
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Jul 19 2007, 01:44 PM
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#8
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Member Group: Members Posts: 509 Joined: 2-July 05 From: Calgary, Alberta Member No.: 426 |
Hmm. This is interesting.
I wouldn't have thought that something as small as Charon could still have liquid water in its interior. This isn't like Enceladus or Miranda where a big gas-giant planet is available to power tidal heating. Just to speculate: My understanding is that a lot of the Earth's uranium floated to the crustal layer during the planet's formation. You'd expect such a heavy element to sink, but uranium likes to combine chemically with oxygen, and that provides it with a lot of buoyancy. On a body like Charon, though, the uranium would only be able to float to the top of the core -- where it would remain, insulated by a 500-km-deep layer of ice. So should we expect ice/rock bodies like Pluto, Charon and Triton to hold onto their radiothermal heat more efficiently than similarly-sized rocky bodies? (Assuming we could find any similarly sized rocky bodies, of course.) |
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Jul 19 2007, 01:58 PM
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#9
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Senior Member Group: Moderator Posts: 2785 Joined: 10-November 06 From: Pasadena, CA Member No.: 1345 |
Wow.
Would this then imply that we might expect ancient cryovolcanoes, like really old and cratered versions of Tortola facula or Ganesa macula on Titan, on the surface of larger KBO objects like Pluto and friends? -Mike -------------------- Some higher resolution images available at my photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/
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Jul 19 2007, 02:53 PM
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#10
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Rover Driver Group: Members Posts: 1015 Joined: 4-March 04 Member No.: 47 |
If the surface is covered with fresh ice I can imagine the surface looking quite young...
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Jul 19 2007, 03:06 PM
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#11
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Member Group: Members Posts: 401 Joined: 5-January 07 From: Manchester England Member No.: 1563 |
Apart from heat due to radioactive materials, are there any other potential heat sources that far out? For example (picks an idea out of the air) could there have been a recent impact large enough to have liquified the interior? I know any ideas would be pure speculation, but thats all we'll have until june 2015 . The ammonia in the (possible) water might allow for heat sources ordinarily to feeble to be considered to have an impact. Would anyone care to speculate?
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Jul 19 2007, 03:07 PM
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#12
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Member Group: Members Posts: 153 Joined: 14-August 06 Member No.: 1041 |
Charon - the ultimate in fresh powder skiing...or in the limited gravity with Pluto pulling so closely would it be powder surfing?
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Jul 19 2007, 03:13 PM
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#13
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2173 Joined: 28-December 04 From: Florida, USA Member No.: 132 |
Or would it be powder cross country, with few sloped surfaces?
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Jul 19 2007, 03:18 PM
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#14
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Senior Member Group: Moderator Posts: 2785 Joined: 10-November 06 From: Pasadena, CA Member No.: 1345 |
A current projected resurfacing rate of 1 mm/1E5 years would only give about an inch and a half of powder over the age of the solar system.
Even if the resurfacing rates were much, much higher in the past, the powder may only obscure some of the smaller really old features. It should look quite pretty. I imagine craters and peaks all lightly coated and sparkly with a thin ice glazing. [Littlebit, I'd strongly suggest using rental skis, instead of your own. ] -Mike -------------------- Some higher resolution images available at my photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/
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Jul 21 2007, 07:24 PM
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#15
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Member Group: Members Posts: 509 Joined: 2-July 05 From: Calgary, Alberta Member No.: 426 |
... could there have been a recent impact large enough to have liquified the interior? Probably not... an impact big enough to liquify the interior would probably also have thrown Charon's orbit off-circular. We'd be able to see the ellipticity of its orbit, I think. |
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Jul 23 2007, 05:54 PM
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#16
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Member Group: Members Posts: 153 Joined: 14-August 06 Member No.: 1041 |
Just to speculate: My understanding is that a lot of the Earth's uranium floated to the crustal layer during the planet's formation. You'd expect such a heavy element to sink, but uranium likes to combine chemically with oxygen, and that provides it with a lot of buoyancy. There is also the chromographic soil effect: At a nuclear facility near Hanford, Washington, extremely low concentration radioactive wastes were dumped in an evaporative sludge pond. Over time (probably decades), elements were chomographically separated in the clay, and a layer of high energy waste was concentrated naturally near the surface to an unnatrual level - almost self sustaining. I also have a questionable account about how the problem was discovered: rabbits managed to get through the fence and nibble on grasses growing in the pond. Routine radioactive measurements taken outside of the fence uncovered radioactive rabbit pellets... |
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Jul 24 2007, 06:58 AM
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#17
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1870 Joined: 20-February 05 Member No.: 174 |
So THAT'S where they filmed "Night of the Lepus"!
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Jul 25 2007, 12:23 AM
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#18
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8784 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Only if the...er...evidence was the size of rugby balls. (Still can't believe Gregory Peck ever agreed to be in that lemon...)
EDIt: I'm wrong, thank God...Peck wasn't in it...although Stuart Whitman & Janet Leigh's talents were definitely wasted, so the mourning is appropriate... -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Jul 25 2007, 02:16 AM
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#19
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Senior Member Group: Moderator Posts: 2785 Joined: 10-November 06 From: Pasadena, CA Member No.: 1345 |
There is also the chromatographic soil effect: At a nuclear facility near Hanford, Washington, extremely low concentration radioactive wastes were dumped in an evaporative sludge pond. Over time (probably decades), elements were chromatographically separated in the clay, and a layer of high energy waste was concentrated naturally near the surface to an unnatrual level - almost self sustaining. Likely nucleides for heating mantles (at least for Earth) are Uranium, Thorium, and Potassium-40. According to Wikipedia (my copy of Cotton and Wilkenson's is back at the office), uranium likes being in oxidation states U(+4) or U(+6), with the most common form in nature (terrestrial conditions) being U3O8. "Both oxide forms are solids that have low solubility in water and are stable over a wide range of environmental conditions." But at the bottom of an ammonia water ocean, what would be the preferred form? Would it be a uranium hydroxide (U[OH]6), or would it be ligated to ammonium (NH4)xUy(OH)z? Could there be hot water percolating throughout a silicate core concentrating some bizarre uranium species at the silicate/water interface? In Littlebit's Hanford scenario, the water percolates upward and evaporates. (Or does it percolate down, and concentrate the stuff at the "top of the column" - leaching away everything but the uranium) On Charon, maybe the material percolates "upwards" but the uranium species (U3O8?) crashes out when it hits cooler water? This just begs for a cool (and easy to do experiment with a scintillation counter) experimental model. Just not in my lab.... -Mike (I wonder what the forms of other likely radionucleides are? WWTD [What Would Thorium Do?]) [Potassium(40) is easy: KOH would be the preferred form and it is extremely soluble in water - it would not be able to concentrate] -------------------- Some higher resolution images available at my photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/
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