Pluto Predictions, What will NH find? Options

[Juramike]

Dunes.

And basins.

Maybe not as thoroughly chemically processed as Titan's basins, but basins.



What do you think New Horizons will find at Pluto? How will Pluto surprise us?

-Mike

[dvandorn]

I'm expecting to see strong tectonic effects on both Pluto and Charon. I think tidal effects will have caused a lot of surface disruption on both bodies.

I also think it's possible that Charon, at least, may resemble Umbriel as a body that has been roughly re-assembled from the crushed remnants of an earlier body. The total angular momentum of the Pluto-Charon system resembles that of the early Earth-Moon system, which supports the idea that Pluto and Charon have a similar big whack kind of history. Pluto may show some very interesting signs of a post-impact redifferentiation, but Charon may be just below the size limit to have re-differentiated. It all depends on how long ago their big whack occurred, and the materials involved, of course, and while we have some hard compositional data, it's not exact enough to plug into a pretty formula and get Pluto/Charon out the other end.

So, I expect to see what we're going out there to see -- something unlike anything we've ever seen before.



-the other Doug

[Hungry4info]

I also think it's possible that Charon, at least, may resemble Umbriel as a body that has been roughly re-assembled from the crushed remnants of an earlier body.

Do you mean Miranda?