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JD McPherson
You must have met little Caroline Do you feel like I feel Half a dozen times a day When the lights go out and your thoughts drift away? |
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The triple point of nitrogen is at a temperature 63K and a pressure of 12.5kPa. Below 12.5kPa, nitrogen does not have a liquid phase, it goes straight from solid to gas like dry ice.
Pluto has a surface pressure of 1Pa, 12500 times too small but as NASA points out Pluto's axis wobbles (Milankovitch style) 24 degrees every 2.8 million years which has drastic effects on atmospheric pressure. Pluto's atmosphere can reach high enough pressures every 2.8 Myr to allow nitrogen to reach its triple point allowing it to transition through its solid, liquid and gas phases, |
Otherwise, because of a lack of pressure the nitrogen ice transitions directly from a solid ice to a gas vapor bypassing the liquid phase.
Consider how much more significant the subsurface pressures act on this nitrogen. When nitrogen goes from solid to liquid it expands unlike water ice. When it is a gas it expands even more and all this expansion of this subsurface nitrogen causes expansion fractures on the surface crust as the nitrogen escapes forming an atmosphere and a nitrogen ocean of toothpaste ice at Sputnik Planitia. |
The below image's are the same as on the left but viewed from the north facing toward the south. You can see two to five crumpled ridge lines also known as fold mountains (AKA signs of compression) as mentioned on page 29.
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This model of Pluto and Charon being differentiated was created by NASA before New Horizons arrived so some of the info (numbers) is inaccurate (well, according to me it's mostly all inaccurate as I believe Pluto is uniform).
Since New Horizons' arrival at Pluto, Scientists now calculate Pluto has a density of 1.86 ±0.013 g/cm3 and is differentiated. |
On Earth we assume there is a liquid iron core which has a density of 7.8 which is more than twice that of silicate rock yet there is iron on Earth’s rocky surface due to pressure released by volcanoes.
If the fluid we see on the surface of Pluto is more dense than the ice crust, doesn’t it stand to reason liquid nitrogen is being forced up from below and this is likely the fluid or ocean of material below Pluto’s surface which is causing its crustal cracks and expansion. Nitrogen when frozen constricts unlike water which expands. When nitrogen migrates from a frozen to fluid state it expands. We see evidence of Pluto’s surface stretching along with fluid nitrogen which is likely causing the expanding and stretching fractures. |
Something else I struggle with regarding most scientific statements is how most of them assume all activities which created the planets and moons in our solar system took place in the first 500 million years then everything seems to have stopped for 4 billion years.
Our solar system is in a continual process of change. From 1994 to 2013 (19 years) there have been 556 bolide (asteroid) impacts on Earth. Pluto's thin atmosphere unlike ours would not destroy these objects before they impacted it's surface. Let me repeat that fact, |
Neptune has created a gravitational low pressure pocket where objects from the Kuiper Belt are coalesced and focused into a 2:3 resonant frequency zone. These Kuiper Belt Object's (KBO) captured in a 2:3 resonance are called Plutinos. This forces some KBO's to cluster together and is likely how Pluto was formed and is still being formed to this day.
While 90482 Orcus is in a 2:3 resonance with Neptune, it is 180 degrees out of phase with Pluto, 1994 JR1 is captured in this 2:3 resonance and is in phase with Pluto and there are many more of these same type objects we know about and many we don't. This clustering of KBO's and subsequent impacts is likely what causes Pluto/Charon to be regularly bombarded by objects which cause some regular planetary growth. |
PolishPlanetPursuer's model on page 30 fits closely to what I'm trying to express. Pluto has been hit by many different sized and density objects which create melt points via shock waves on the surface, the evidence of which is everywhere.
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The paper also suggest an additional factor of pressure would have lowered the melt point further but the paper looses me with its complexity and assumptions at this point and does not specify a temperature which is reached due to pressure and other salts mixed with the water.
According to the Ice Shell paper Pluto has an active hot radioactive core from the Pluto/Charon impact this along with their early tidal stresses from 4 billion years ago have kept the interior hot and the water ocean in a liquid form for 4 billion years which is only now freezing and expanding. |
Quote from a Francis Nimmo paper
5.2 Heat Production For the icy satellites, there are three main sources of heat: accretion, radioactive decay, and tidal heating. Even for Ganymede-size satellites, the gravitational energy released during accretion is rather modest, so that initial differentiation is not guaranteed [Barr and Canup, 2008]. (Ganymede's radius of 2,634 km is more than twice Pluto's 1,187 km) If accretion happens sufficiently rapidly, some melting will take place [e.g., Lunine and Stevenson, 1982], but the overall contribution to the existence of present-day oceans is minor to negligible. |
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Riddle me this batman. How can an object like Pluto which is so small, so cold and so far from any energy source (other than impacts) relative to the moon be assumed to have a differentiated radioactive core of silicate rock (same rock as our moon at a fraction of the volume), still be actively hot sustaining a subsurface ocean of water after the all encompassing 4 to 4.5 billion year time frame?? |