A polish planet hunting friend suggested I take a new look at Charon and Pluto in a flat splayed out format. Initially, I thought the images were too blurred to add any additional information, but I was wrong.
I was pleased to see that these images support the story (at least part of it) that my previous interpretations portray. On the previous page I suggested an impact occurred on Charon around the 8 O-Clock position which, in turn, sent a shock wave to the opposite side around the 2 O-Clock Position which nearly dislodged a huge plug of ice from off Charon's crust. |
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The Weird Terrain is a jumble of hills, 5-10 km across by up to 2 km high (gradient of up to 50%)
P waves are pressure waves that punch through an object. S waves travel through an object but also ripple along the surface and collided or clap into each other on the opposite side of a sphere. P waves travel faster than the S waves but the end result is that when a planet is smacked hard enough by an object, waves propagate to the other side causing disruptions. This same phenomenon would have taken place on Charon when impacted. Mercury is mostly a core of 70% metal with a crust of silicate rock. Charon is a ball of rock hard ice with some silicate rock dispersed throughout. It wouldn't be anywhere near as difficult for an impactor to disrupt the opposite side of Charon as on Mercury and yet this has occurred on Mercury so its easy to see how it would also occur on Charon. |
The impacts around the 8 O-Clock area on Charon don't appear to have penetrated as deep as one would expect but I think this is because the rock ice is so hard it tends to break up the impacting objects rather than allowing those objects to break up the surface.
All impacts on the northern hemisphere display similar patterns, jagged impact edges with splattered debris on the surface. Conversely, the southern hemisphere displays totally different patterns when impacted, The southern hemisphere displays impact holes punched into a softer more absorbent material. |
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The center object was large and contained large amounts of red material which likely made it more dense than the object that impacted to it's left. The left object while large appears to have been soft enough to not penetrate deep. Imagine three consecutive impacts in fairly rapid succession.
They impacted from left to right, first soft light grayish/reddish object hit, then medium size medium hard reddish object hit, then a smaller hard no red material object hit, in that order. Look at the scene you can see it. these were large impacts so the shock waves would have been massive. Watch this video to see what sound waves can do. |
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Cold trapping is theoretically the process of Charon capturing tholin from Pluto's atmosphere at its poles and according to NASA if it exist on the north pole of Charon it should also exist on the south pole but there is no evidence of tholin around the south pole.
Here's a video of this statement fast forward from 1:09:15 to 1:10:55. Their reasoning for the absence of tholin on the south pole is that the south pole is in permanent darkness but as you can see in the above image the tholin on the north extends far out from the north pole and would do likewise on the south pole and yet no evidence of this exist. |
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