But N2 on Pluto's surface wouldn't have much/any NH3. Buried and warmed N2 wouldn't be at vacuum. But the concept is noted and probably valid.
Thank you for the feedback Would it be OK to reference you & this conversation on a web page as I did before on NH3? http://bit.ly/2k2ANTE
Sure ..
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Video of nitrogen at triple point
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Who is Jason Cook - Planetary Astronomer & Research Scientist, Icy Worlds, Spectroscopist, Data Modling, @AstroCook At Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), I was a post-doc on the New Horizons mission. I was responsible for developing the pipeline for the MVIC (Multi-spectral Visible Imaging Camera) component of Ralph, the visible color and near infrared instrument on New Horizons. The pipeline used the instrument SPICE kernels to reconstruct the trajectory of New Horizons to remove motion distortion in the MVIC images. |
Below video demonstrates slightly better explosive reaction of N2 while at triple point.
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This process would not require full chunks of water ice ejecting off Pluto only the fluid gasses. This could explain older moons with younger material on the surface. However, this does not explain away the red tholin impact on Nix which almost certainly was a chunk of tholin covered water ice that came from Pluto.
This red zit on Nix seems to indicate ice chunks are blown out into space as well as the softer more volatile gasses. The fact that a tholin covered chunk hit Nix in its lower orbit suggest that triple point explosions are energetic enough to place an object into the same orbital path as Nix. Consequently, Nix could then also be one of these chunks of water ice from Pluto ejected during one of these Milankovitch cycles. What we can say with some confidence, thanks to Jason, is that the idea of Pluto splattering or spray painting the moon's with nitrogen or possibly ammonia hydrates is "probably valid". If frozen gasses like N2, CO, CH4 and NH3 or even NH4+OH could be ejected off Pluto then rock hard H2O probably could be as well and Nix's red zit seems to be evidence of that fact which in turn supports the idea that Nix itself is a chunk of Pluto. This method may explain the process by which Nix and Styx were placed into orbit but then the question becomes how old are they or when did this process take place? Impacts (craters) on bodies do explain some portion of the story about age, how accurate and reliable is anyone's guess. One accurate consistent reliable fact related to impacts is that geologically dead bodies with larger sized and higher frequency impacts per area tend to be older than bodies with smaller sized and lower impact frequencies per area, that is, unless the body is in a ring of material or debris field. |
Old Moons
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Young Moons
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Albedo is far, far brighter than other nearby old bodies
Small moons have ridiculous spin rates Small moon's Poles are not aligned with Pluto/Charon Charon’s southern hemisphere covered with fragments Nix has a red tholin impact crater Triple point of N2 creates ejective explosions Photolysis destroys NH3 in 2o Myr but it covers small moons Charon was heated to >90K in the last 100K years H2O crystalline to amorphous phase on Charon only takes 1.5 Myr Small moons are not in mean-motion resonance with Charon |
With so many potential discrepancies found in the crater counting age dating methods and the 3 billion year variance in its results, this supportive argument for old moons is pretty much rendered inept (in my opinion).
The one thing we are then left with suggesting these moons might be old is their circular orbits but I question the strength of this concept as a supportive explanation as well. We launch satellites into circular orbits all the time here on Earth. It's not that hard and it doesn't take a long time for it to occur, all that's needed is the correct ejection velocity and viola you instantly have a small satellite in a circular orbit. Pluto's gravity is only 6% that of Earth's. |
This paper ON THE IMPACT ORIGIN OF PHOBOS AND DEIMOS suggest Mar's two small moons Phobos and Deimos may have been ejected off Mars and into orbit by a collision.
Our simulations also suggest that the building blocks of Phobos and Deimos contain both impactor and Martian materials (at least 35%), most of which come from the Martian mantle (50-150 km in depth) at least 50%. |
This however is only an indication of surface age not planet age where geological activity renews the surface but in cases where there is no renewal process (no geology) as seen on the small satellites the surface albedo being brighter is an indication of the body's age not just the surface age.
Cosmic rays and space dust darken icy bodies and over long time frames will turn the surface of a dead body darker than charcoal. Bright dead bodies are younger than dark dead bodies. A planet like Pluto being geologically alive, snows methane and as a result has a young layer of snow on an old surface so albedo and crater's help guesstimate age but are far from definitive the opposite is true for dead bodies. |
Update February 13th, 2018
The spectroscopic chart above from NASA and to the right from the USGS Spectral Library show the classic reflectance and absorption dip patterns of water ice at 1.5 and 1.65 microns identifying the presence of crystalline water ice. A dip at 1.5, 2.0 are strong indicators of H2O the dip at 1.65 indicates the water has a crystalline structure. A dip at 2.21 (below table) would be a marker of ammonia hydrates. If the 1.65 dip didn't exist the water ice would be amorphous or without any crystallized structure. |
Quote from Universe Today Article
Astronomers rank an object’s reflectivity by its albedo (al-BEE-do). A body that reflects 100% of the light is said to have an albedo of 1.0. Venus’ albedo is .75 and reflects 75% of the light it receives from the sun, while the darker Earth’s average is 30%. Trees and the darker-toned continents reflect much less light compared to Venus’ pervasive cloud cover. In contrast, the coal-dark moon reflects only 12% of the sunlight falling on it and fresh asphalt just 4% – smack in the middle of the 2-6% range of most known comets. I created this table to demonstrate just how bright Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra are compared to other Plutinos in their neighborhood. Nix and Hydra are about 20% brighter than their parent planet indicating they are younger than the parent planets. All Plutinos are far darker than Pluto and its moons. Normal Plutinos are between 6 and 29 times darker than Pluto's moons. I didn't include 1994 JR1 in the table but its a Plutino with an albedo of .04 in line with other nearby Plutinos. New Horizons' had a dust counter on board but didn't detect any worth mentioning. NASA scientists' have suggested micro meteorites are perpetually cleaning regolith off the surface's of Pluto's moons increasing their albedo's but apparently this same process does not take place with all the other Plutinos in the nearby area only around Pluto. Then when NASA calculates the age of the moons based on impacts they use soft dark regolith not water ice to scale and shift the results. Nix has an albedo of .56 (56% reflected light) and Hydra .83 (83%), indicating they are not covered in regolith making them young, much younger than all other Plutino's. The albedo of Triton is .76 more in line with all the Pluto bodies than all other Plutinos. |
The NH3 paper refers to the impact at Organa crater on Charon and suggest that either the ammonia is below the surface and gouged out by impactors (their preferred explanation) or is delivered from above by the impactor itself.
Consider the logic of this. Two impacts about 75 miles apart show completely different splatter patterns even though the paper says the ammonia is uniformly distributed across the surface of Charon via slow diffusion through the upper layers of ice. This image clearly shows that the ammonia is delivered by the impactor. |
For all their efforts to be accurate and precise, when I read scientific papers, I find there are, at times, points around which consistent logical explanations fail.
There are several processes taking place indicating short time frames, water ice has not been converted from a crystalline structure to an amorphous phase which should have taken place within 1.5 million years of Charon's formation 3.5 to 4 billion years ago. Ammonia hydrates exist and would be disassembled by the sun in 20 million years. The moons have ridiculous spins and pole wobbles. The albedo of the entire system is too bright and screams we are young and coated in young ammonia material. |
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