Quote from Chu article,
The researchers determined that the heart-shaped region, and Sputnik Planitia in particular, is aligned almost exactly opposite from Charon. “The New Horizons data say it’s not only opposite Charon, but it’s really close to being almost exactly opposite,” Binzel says. “So we asked, what’s the chance of that randomly happening? And it’s less than 5 percent that it would be so perfectly opposite. |
To the New Horizons team, a weak spot in Sputnik Planitia’s basin suggests that the planet’s crust, particularly in this region, must be quite thin. If a massive impactor indeed created the basin, it may have also triggered any material beneath the surface to push the thin crust outward, causing a “positive gravitational anomaly,” or a thick, heavy mass, that would have helped to align the region relative to Charon.
But what sort of material would create enough of a gravitational weight to reorient the planet relative to its moon? To answer this, the team turned to a geophysical model of Pluto’s interior, working in measurements from the New Horizons spacecraft. End Quote |
Pluto and Charon could have naturally aligned such that their internal uneven mass distribution was balanced by a torque induced tilt (Page 41),
Early in their eccentric orbital dance when both were being stretched and pulled and kneaded like dough through tidal stretch they likely found their own state of balance. Then, in time, as their orbits became more circular the constant squeeze of Charon's gravity on Pluto at this tidally locked position called SP caused a section of Pluto to collapse. In other words, the egg came first. The section that collapsed would be the area exactly opposite Charon's constant gravitational squeeze. That collapsed area then became SP. Both of these scenarios are possibilities but when only one is considered then the potential explanations are restricted or constricted by that assumption. |
Earle found that if bright ice builds up at the poles, it simply melts away when summer returns. But if that same ice forms near the equator, it never gets warm enough to melt away.
“What makes the equator unique is, if you put a bright spot there, because it never gets too hot or cold, then the bright spot will always stay cold,” Earle says. “If ice accumulates at the equator, it can hang onto it.” Earle modeled the region’s temperatures over millions of years, looking at the tilt of Pluto’s axis, its orientation to the sun, and its daily rotation. From all this, she found that Sputnik Planitia’s ice sheet likely has persisted for millions of years. The long-lived deposit of ice on Pluto’s “heart” may have also played a role in orienting the planet toward its moon. |
Quote from a paper published at Nature.com by Tanguy Bertrand and Francois Forget titled
Observed glacier and volatile distribution on Pluto from atmosphere–topography processes Quote: "The characteristics of Sputnik Planum are thus explained by its latitude and depth rather than by a connection with putative (supposed) N2 reservoirs in the deep interior." Here we report numerical simulations of the evolution of N2, methane and carbon monoxide on Pluto over thousands of years. |
So the theory is that ices built up in the basin of SP because it is low (a basin) and at the equator where it doesn't experience extreme transitions from relative hot to cold and these ices are atmospherically deposited over thousands if not millions of years. Yet SP was supposed to have formed by an impact 60 degrees upward in the northern hemisphere where extreme temperature causes the methane ices to sublimate completely away during the north pole summer. If this were the case then the ices would not have accumulated into the basin of SP as the north pole summer would have sublimated the ices away never allowing enough build up of ices to rotate the planet to its current position. |
In other words, here on Earth we have an ocean that is heated by the Sun which causes moisture to evaporate off the ocean creating clouds which turn to rain which we then call an atmosphere. The ocean creates the rain, the rain does not create the ocean. On Pluto you need the ocean of nitrogen, methane, carbon monoxide at SP first in order to have an atmosphere of sublimated methane snow. The atmosphere isn't creating Sputnik Planitia, Sputnik Planitia is creating the atmosphere. We're back to the chicken and egg scenario. |
So what did come first the chicken or the egg? One could argue the dinosaur preceded the chicken from which the chicken developed and dinosaur's were egg layers. After all, T-rex was a giant chicken without feathers, T-rex did have hairs that eventually became feathers. Dinosaurs did lay eggs and chickens did come from dinosaurs. |
But all life forms develop from a cell with a protective membrane i.e... an egg. A chicken egg is a type of hybrid of the cell with it's outer protective membrane and internal fluid where digestion and replication take place. The egg or cell preceded complex life, complex life formed from the cells/eggs replication and digestion process. That is to say the cell with a protective membrane like the egg came first. |
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