We were wrong on dwarf planet Pluto, astronomers say


This 28 January 2018 video says about itself:

What did NASA’s New Horizons discover around Pluto?

In 2015, NASA’s New Horizons space probe whizzed by Pluto. Now it has sent back all of its data, what did it see and discover?

From daily The Independent in Britain:

New Horizons: Scientists admit they were completely wrong about ‘inert’ Pluto

Photos from the New Horizons spacecraft show 3,000m mountains and possible volcanoes

Ian Johnston

As Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft took its last look at Pluto yesterday from nearly six million kilometres away, scientists were marvelling at how “very active” the dwarf planet is in contrast with previous theories that it was an inert ball of ice and rock.

Extraordinary photographs from the mission have shown vast plains, 3,000-metre mountains, possible volcanoes, rift valleys and other features suggesting it has a molten core and shifting tectonic plates.

Just like Earth. The absence of impact craters from meteorites on its plains, however, indicates they are geologically speaking quite young, perhaps 100 million years old, and that Pluto is probably geologically active. Similar signs have been seen on its moon, Charon.

Previously it had been thought that both must be inert lumps drifting through space. But Alan Stern, principal investigator of Nasa’s New Horizons mission, said that scientists had been “completely wrong about that”.

“They are very active. Pluto and Charon have been geologically active for billions of years, but we don’t know what the energy is that is driving it. It’s a puzzle,” he told The Sunday Times. “They have surface areas that have no craters. There must be craters unless they are young.

“We also see faultlines, scarps and other tectonic features such as rift valleys on both Pluto and Charon. It is unmistakable.”

One theory behind the movement on Pluto’s surface is that there is a radioactive heat source in its rocky core, thought to make up about 60 per cent of its mass.

The rest is mostly a thick layer of ice so cold that it behaves like stone. However, the hot core could be sending geysers of warm water shooting up to the surface.

Pluto has a layer of atmosphere, made up mainly of nitrogen, which extends about 1,600km above its surface.

However, this is gradually being stripped away by the solar wind, creating a “plasma tail” extending up to 109,000km. Scientists hope to work out how quickly this is happening, with more data expected in August. So far, New Horizons has sent a gigabit of information but another 49 gigabits are expected. “What we have now is scratching the surface. The best is yet to come,” Mr Stern said.

Read more: PLUTO BIGGER THAN WE THOUGHT

Pluto’s vast, craterless plains ‘exceed all expectations’ in latest image

WATCH HOW FAR WE’VE COME IN THREE-BILLION-MILE JOURNEY TO PLUTO

NEW HORIZONS IMAGES THROW OUT PREVIOUS UNDERSTANDING OF PLUTO

PLUTO’S MOON, HYDRA, SHOWN IN DETAIL FOR FIRST TIME EVER

Some of Pluto’s features have already been named informally, such as the Sputnik Plain, after the first spaceship, the Norgay Mountains, after Tenzing Norgay, the first person to climb Mount Everest along with Edmund Hillary, and the Tombaugh Region after Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930.

Other names used include Meng-p’o, the Buddhist goddess of forgetfulness; Vucub-Came and Hun-Came, heroic twins and death gods of the Mayan people of Central America; and Balrog, a monster from The Lord of the Rings.

The New Horizons mission enabled scientists to accurately measure Pluto for the first time and it appears to be the largest of the dwarf planets at 2,370km (1,473 miles) in diameter.

Early yesterday, New Horizons was 5.7 million km (about 3.5 million miles) beyond Pluto. “This will be our last look at the dark areas on Pluto’s surface. Bitter sweet!” Nasa’s New Horizons mission tweeted.

These high-res images of Pluto make us very, very angry about its planet demotion.

12 thoughts on “We were wrong on dwarf planet Pluto, astronomers say

  1. Not that long ago scientists declared Pluto as not being a planet at all as their definition excluded this so called planet now having the Nasa scientists being exhilarated almost orgasmic, these clever intellectual freaks show their true colors? they are just well paid egg heads who are on salaries from a branch of the militaristic genre, paid by the tax payer, the resources used on these excursions investigating outer space is all very well, we have to put this in perspective? what is going on is the 1% rich who devise schemes to satisfy the rest of the 8 billion inhabitants of the globe to give them some vision that we have a vision whereas it is a devise to hide the oppression of our world so the average person who has the energy to think we are going some where as a destiny and to take your mind off of impoverishment and calamities such as devised war, who many scientists are no more than creating misery for millions in contributing to the act of devising new ways of killing people.
    Individuals such as Hawkins and Brian Cox are all part of the subversives whom are promoting the idea that the Universe is a logical state and it can be described in mechanistic terms, and that we should look at the Universe as nothing more than a machine that has no mysteries, they are and their are many of these individuals desire to be pop stars, you can see Cox as a rock star and what he wants is a place of power as with Hawkins, as a result of their university training they become indoctrinated within the system is organized crime such as the CIA and MI5 all working on the destruction of people and all becoming part of the destruction of any spirituality and all working for the 1% rich, as you can see with individuals such as Pol Pot, having been educated in France came back to his country as a seasoned killer.
    Scientists should not be trusted as in many or almost all scientists they having been trained so long in their education are now stunted as a human being, do not get taken in by this profession thinking they are advance humans or worst our contemporary God figures? rather than often stunted freaks.

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