March 18, 2016

There is a ridge on Pluto that runs from the North to South Pole and there are some strange things occurring along this ridge.

The north pole faces the sun when it is furthest from the sun and is bathed in gentle UV light which coupled with seasonal changes have produced a white snow fall of methane whose surface is being slowly turned into tholin evidenced by the yellowish hue atop elevated surfaces. As we migrate south through Sputnik Planum the gradient of hue changes from yellowish to cement gray.

The south pole faces the sun when it is nearest to the sun and is baked in an oven of UV light relative to the north pole. Couple this with seasonal changes which creates changing atmospheric weather or at least snow fall from nitrogen and methane condensate and you get cement goo I guess. The surface of Pluto appears to be getting covered in thin layers of stuff from the atmosphere. From the north the material is light from the south it is dark but it would seem that its made from the same stuff but because of differing external forces the end result varies. That's as close as I can get to explaining this incredibly complex scene.

On earth we have plate tectonics, the only place we know of in the solar system with them. It is thought that earth has plate tectonics because of the water which allows the mantle to slide around. On Pluto the one place I see that could be interpreted as tectonics is along this North South Ridge Line where the fluid and its energy are colliding with frozen land masses.

Along this southern ridge at some point hard land meets softer land and the bulge or Ridge Line begins.

This whole ridge from north to south provides a lot of tantalizing visual evidence of difficult to explain processes that are shaping Pluto. After looking at this N/S Ridge Line, I have some observations to make but many more questions than answers to provide.

The Ridge Line

There is a ridge line that runs from Pluto's north pole to its south. There are three sections There is the North, Equatorial and South Ridge Line sections which I've outlined. I'll begin at the south pole and work my way up through the equatorial and then the North section.

The south pole area of Pluto looks like someone drove a cement truck up to and dumped cement all over the old tholin covered surface. This south pole area experienced massive disturbances from shock waves delivered by impacts.

In addition to the energy from shock waves the south pole at perihelion (closest to sun) receives the largest amount of UV radiation. On top of that, this area is where the icebergs are plowing into the cement like land and getting swallowed.

Southern Ridge

The North Pole faces the sun when Pluto is at aphelion (furthest from Sun). The methane from the north sublimates (evaporates) and floats into varying layers of the atmosphere drifting south. While in the atmosphere and drifting southward, it accumulates on elevated ridges.

The snow capped Ridge Line's peaks at the south pole can be easily seen in this view. If you look closely at this image you can see the softened land running along each side of the rigid ridge line, I tried to place the arrows far enough out from the ridge so you can see the flowing looking land. It's most obvious at the lower left area of the ridge.

This ridge is the border between soft and hard land ice. This is where the surface exposes the underground action that's taking place and the bulge in the land shows up as a snow capped ridge.

Something confusing me here is the gray cement like stuff, On elevated places it is accumulating on the surface as an atmospheric scenario. Whereas lower elevations with red stuff inside like craters still have their red tholin skin but elevated areas show a light dusting as though this stuff condensed out of the atmosphere and is being laid down in layers relative to elevation. But in other areas its more confusing.

The center of the ridge line is raised and angular whereas the outer edges on either side show smooth ripples of softer below surface material. This is the one place that looks like tectonic activity. The rigid land is currently halting the advance of the moving soft land and the ridge along with softened material on both sides would infer some heating is taking place underneath and along this line and it runs from south to north pole.

Cement Tributaries

This is the top portion of the southern ridge line. Some really interesting stuff is taking place here.

There are what appears to be three different types of material.
There's methane snow on the peaks of the ridge line migrating from the north.
There is red tholin stuff and then there is this gray wet cement like stuff.
The methane snow capped peak's show signs of gray cement runoff in the form of tributaries that merge into rivers and then lakes.
White peaked mountain top's runoff is blending with the red stuff which appears to create a slurry of cement colored material that flows down the mountains and into valleys creating rivers and lakes of muddy cement. This cement fluid appears to soften the land it courses through

The runoff from the mountain peaks is so clear it's spooky.
Its as if you could ski down the gray fluid off the peaks then wade through and survive in the tributaries while later building a raft to ride down the rivers to end up fishing in a lake. Very cool, very bizarre.
This is like a rapid moving water fluid flowing on the surface of a relatively slow moving glacier which in turn suggest the gray stuff is methane snow melted into the tholin turning it all into a cement like paste that layers the surface but that's not it.
This stuff is flowing down from the mountains and you can see it running down the edges and filling a couple of the impact craters.

When we see a scene similar to this on earth it's atop glaciers with melt water carving crevasses in the glacier.

But the scene changes drastically the further south and east we travel and the quantity of wet cement can't be from runoff or can it?

It may be that the extra UV exposure of the south pole at perihelion (closest to the Sun) cooks these chemicals into some form of aerosol that collects on the mountain peaks and turns into a liquid flow that can stay fluid at colder temperatures than the surrounding land ice. Seems the methane snow is kept frozen in this location while the gray fluid is flowing.

Which way did he go?

This is a closeup of the area just to the right and above the previous image. What seems obvious is that the gray stuff is accumulating on the northern walls of craters as well as land wall faces. This means the material is traveling through the atmosphere from the south pole area and collecting on the north walls which are facing south. On the other hand, the white snow capped peaks or crater rims are collecting white stuff from the north. This means the white stuff came from the north and is collecting on the south walls which are facing northward. Two completely different materials coming from opposite directions.

I think I can conclude the gray stuff is emanating from the south pole region, The only thing I can think would cause this is UV light since the south pole is pointed at the sun during perihelion (closest to sun). Compare this scene to the north pole with all its fluffy soft white snow material along with its slowly changing light orange tholin. The north pole is facing the sun's UV energy at aphelion (furthest from the sun) so it gets a gentle bathing in UV light and the opposite is true at the south pole. These two scenarios would allow the Sun's UV to bake the two poles with different levels of radiation probably causing the variations in the look of the material created by those processes.

The red tholin took a long slow time to get laid atop the entire planet, Things were quiet for a long long time. Then all hell breaks loose and Sputnik Planum came into existence. fractures and crumple zones occur, oozing fluid flows, an atmosphere develops, sublimation erupts all over the place. The newly exposed fluid is then baked with different intensities of UV light creating powdery white snow at the north and a gray thick soup at the south.

Conclusion, it appears as though the point of origin for this wet cement looking stuff radiates outward from the south pole. The methane snow is light and has traveled all the way from the north pole down to this area but the dark gray material seems heavier as it accumulates in lower areas and doesn't migrate very far outward from the south pole region.

Rigid Ridges and Muddy Putty

This image includes parts of the image above, you can still see some of the tributaries in the upper left. Following down the left edge there are elevated crumpled angular rigid snow capped mountains (fractured crumpled land ice mashed up into mounds of mountains). To the right, the wet cement like stuff is slowly rolling west in waves.

The smooth surface does not appear to have methane snow. While melt runoff at the tributaries can explain the cement colored lakes, there are no mountain peaks to speak of where the landscape is smooth. The gray stuff travels through the air but is relatively heavy so it falls back to the surface remaining in a fairly localized area it also accumulates on lower area's unlike the light methane snow from the north.

The flowing cement is migrating westward toward the rigid land wall This scene is just west of the bottom of SP where the Icebergs at Norgay Montes are being swallowed by the muddy or wet cement like berm.

At the ridge line the land is crumpled, folded, jagged and pushed tightly together.
Just west of the ridge the land appears smooth as if softened from below.
Just east of the ridge line fluid cement appears to flow in ripples toward the ridge.
Since impact craters have tholin inside them while the fluid flows around the raised rim, This means the wet cement stuff is traveling on top of the surface not seeping from below.

While the two cement's look similar, one appears as runoff from mountain peaks and the other as muddy putty flowing across the landscape, the process of formation seems completely different.

This does appear to be the boundary between fluid from SP colliding with rigid land ice.

What confuses me about this scene is how uniform the gray cement looks but seems to come from two different sources.
One source is snow peak runoff the other is fluid from SP. So why does it all look like the same stuff. I suspect it has to do with UV light during perihelion when Pluto is closest to the sun and its south pole is baked.

Buckle Up

This image is just showing an expanded view of the same area. One significant thing that stands out is the snow capped buckling ridge line and how far back it resides from the western edge of SP. If the fluid at SP is causing the land ice to soften and buckle under the pressure then the influence of the fluid reaches really far into and below the land surface as indicated by the ridge line.

The  Equatorial Ridge Line

Between Piri Planitia and SP is a very peculiar looking piece of land ice. Ignore the N/S Ridge for now.
Charon sent shards of its mantle at Pluto sending Shock waves through to this entire area.
At SP fractures and oozing fluid developed, along the south eastern plains developed weakened surfaces, along the south of SP chunks were knocked off creating Pitts' Pits and something else occurred.

I've been saying impacts, shock waves, icy core well here's more.
The yellow roundish area I've outlined is a very large piece of land ice that was under extreme duress.
Huge fractures run horizontal along the top and bottom, along the left edge the tholin appears to have been heated enough to flow and accrete along the edges implying the central region of this land ice has swelled up in the middle from the shock wave pressure and bubbling fluid gasses from below.

Please excuse the pink bar in the image I goofed with some text and had to wipe it, too lazy to start over.

Let me explain this scene like this, higher elevated surfaces catch the methane snow in larger quantities painting the highest elevation zones white while leaving the lower areas red. Now look at this area again, white = elevated, red = low lands. There's an obvious bulge in the middle. This area almost became an extension of SP.

Fortunately!

The North South Ridge Line has held out so far, keeping this area in tact, however, the ridge line is evidence of the struggle going on between these two regions.

This rounded area reminds me of the super volcano under Yellow Stone National Park where the landscape bulges under the pressures of magma below. I'm going to call this area the "Burp Bulge". Yellow Stone has geysers and steamy hot pools, I don't see any evidence of geysers or vents but the bulge is there almost as if the land wanted to burp but instead has settled for indigestion. At least I think that's what I see. I wonder at what point in this burp bulges life cycle are we witnessing. Is the burp bulge growing larger on its way to fragmenting. Or has it stopped growing and is settling back down? Since there are no signs of geysers the bulge is likely from the land ice being softened from the fluid below while its also being squeezed from the east by SP's fluid migration in turn creating a bulge.

Next I'm going to look at the area circled in light blue.

Break Away

This land ice block is just east of the equatorial Ridge Line.
Look at this enormous chunk of land ice that has fractured and is falling face first into the fluid.
The fluid has softened the structure's leading edge from below while the colliding icebergs are pushing its face down into the fluid. A large crack is seen along its western edge while the eastern edge is sinking into the fluid and being mashed by the icebergs.

Moves Like Jagged

The below image is mostly to help you orient yourself with where I'm going next.
The parallel yellow lines are the N/S Ridge Line running pole to pole, I've already discussed the two sections outlined in blue but now I'm going to zoom in and get close up to a really strange scene which is circled in yellow.

The light blue lined area is a massive chunk of land fractured and being pushed face first into the fluid by advancing icebergs. The icebergs are big so this area is deep allowing large chunks of land, like our light blue section, to fall off and into the deep fluid as floating bergs are pressed into its face.

The dark blue area shows massive fractures along the top and bottom and the whole zone looks like it wants to burp out some gasses. This is why I call it the Burp Bulge, however, there is no evidence of gasses releasing from below the surface and I have looked and looked for it. I wanted gasses to be the cause of this bulge but the evidence doesn't support that idea, so in the trash it goes.

Let's focus on the yellow zone.

Stop it, you crack me up

This is one crazy scene. It looks like very large blocks of land ice have been broken and are getting pushed upward as they are squished together. The large ice fragments are elevated along their edges of contact and are drooping under the surface along the opposite edges.

This looks a little bit like Charon's large chunk of rock face land that fell off the cliff wall along its diagonal boundary. There's more going on here but I'm at a loss to explain it all. I'd encourage you to download a high res image of Pluto and look closely at this area.

This is the same view from a different angle.

Notice all the angled jagged and colliding land ice fragments. This scene looks like a river during ice break up. Things are crunched and pressed but the ice is rigid so it protrudes upward at the points of fracture.

I think you can see clearly in this black and white version of the above image just how the left edge of the land ice has broken off and along the right side is sunken down into the basin of Sputnik Planum.

This image shows how the under surface has fluid penetrating and seeping deeply under the land ice from SP. 

The Peaceful Pole

What can I say about the ridge line at the north pole?
This scene reminds me of Kauai Hawaii, serene, mellow, peaceful, gentle snows, mountains and valleys, gentle UV exposure as the surface gets a little tan, looks like a nice vacation spot as long as you can stand the cold its about 40 degrees above absolute zero so bring a sweater. The northern hemisphere is mostly undisturbed since all the shards from Charon impacting Pluto did so at the equator and below.

< Page 14 Billiards

The Icy Core Model Page 16 >