I seem to be flip flopping on this issue.
Early on I thought the smooth area (red & yellow lines) along the southern portion of Sputnik Planitia (SP) meant that it was deep. Then I started to visualize the larger northern part of SP as a caldera which conjured up images of intense heat so I abandoned the idea this "V" shaped smooth zone was deep. Now because of my wobble page, I'm returning to my original thought. |
A circular 12 degree radius around 0 latitude and 180 longitude appears to be the focus of some Milankovitch tidal flex bulge energy. As Pluto/Charon wobble 24 degrees through the Milankovitch cycle each imparts a gravitational torque on the other. A tidal bulge on each planet is rotated around this zone. This would induce some additional form of energy into Pluto. The right half of the octagon split by the 180 degree line is mostly smooth while the left side displays a number of variations in features. This was the highest resolution image I could obtain with latitude and longitude lines. From this image, I created a 12 degree radius octagon (circle) around 0 lat and 180 lon. I then used land marks from this image to insert my lat lon lines on a much higher resolution image. |
Creating a uniform yellow octagon around the central point in the below image doesn't seem to match the vertical lines of the image above. I think this is because the above image is from a flat map while the below image is of a curved spherical image. This makes the vertical lines bulge outward (blue lines in below image). The blue lines represent the extended zone of the circle which more closely matches landmarks on the above image. |
If you look closely at this section you can see how fluids flow from a higher elevation down into the Sputnik Planitia (SP) basin very similar just slower to what we see at places like Niagara Falls. Circular ring patterns are carved out of the basin walls leaving piles of rocky ice boulders lining the ring's edge. Further toward the center of SP, these raised boulder rings dissipate but also show how the fluid's depth is not so deep as to completely swallow the raised boulder/mountains. |
As we migrate deeper into SP, the raised rocky rims begin to melt into troughs not only following the troughs but creating them forming polygonal cells with raised central mounds and troughs along their edges.
To explain it in terms of Niagara Falls, fluid spilling off the raised uplands/wetlands in eastern Tombaugh Regio is eroding the land at the base of the falls. As the fluid undercuts the base, the top ledge of the fall's collapse, the land erodes upstream leaving behind a boulder field. But this scene differs immensely from Niagara in that the boulders at Niagara sink in water, whereas, the boulders at SP float. |
The top left quadrant of my Milankovitch octagon. Tholin washes off the mountain sized water iceberg blocks creating meandering snake like lines in the N2 glacier which blend with and form into the troughs of the polygonal mounds. At some locations the red tholin appears to have scrunched into elevated ridge lines extending above the nitrogen ice while at other locations the tholin appears to be a subsurface feature with the nitrogen's surface tension keeping it from closing in on and covering the red tholin. The tholin appears run down into the warmer cracks between the ice sheets on the western edge of SP while the eroded boulders seem to align inside the troughs along the eastern edge. Below is a closeup of one portion of this section |
This Keane drawing of a Sean O'Hara lecture sums up my concept of what is taking place at Sputnik Planitia (SP). Slabs of bedrock ice are eroded off the edges, they slip into the SP basin and drift deeper into this sea of nitrogen fluid ice. The weakness with this idea is that the polygonal cells are largest toward the center of SP. This begs the question, how do smaller cells grow into larger ones as they migrate deeper into the the nitrogen fluid. |
Their speculative hypothesis is NINE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE off from experimental reality, that's a billion times off. A BILLION TIMES!!! This is how far out on a limb they are with this convection cell/conveyor belt concept. But I'm supposed to believe this hypothesis, no matter how bizarre, simply because they are scientists and they postulated it. I'm supposed to believe this hypothesis even though its a BILLION times off from experimental reality. |
This is the extent to which scientists are willing to go to sell their Pluto narrative. I used to think some of my concepts were a bit difficult to accept but the degree of faith required to believe this conveyor belt hypothesis is inconceivable. Richard Feynman said "Progress in science comes when experiments contradict theory!" What he was saying is that when experiments prove theory wrong then progress is made. The problem for this conveyor belt theory is that it contradicts our ability to test or experimentally prove its validity and yet much of the speculative hypotheses put forward about Pluto are presented as a suggested hypothesis then treated as fact simply because people keep regurgitating the same comments. NASA scientists suggested a lava lamp convection current hypothesis and now it is completely accepted as fact even though observations don't support this concept. |
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Sputnik Planitia's surface looks nearly identical in spots to Triton's surface. The troughs display a zipper look, where the edges are raised while the center is dotted with tiny sub cups. |
<<<<<<<<< Neptune's moon Triton, Pluto's twin showing cracks looking similar to Enceladus and the surface of Sputnik Planitia. This is the place where heat escaped from below the surface. |
Venera Terra showing ice sheets frozen into polygonal cells with warmer fluid channels between the cells subsequently creating troughs. Venera Terra looks exactly like an older frozen fossilized version of SP. Venera Terra displays elevated mounds of polygonal cellular ice sheets with warm fluid troughs along the edges and a smooth plane to the south. |
This is a western edge section of SP rotated 90 degrees right to give a similar visual orientation as seen at Venera Terra. Looks like ice sheets with raised centers and softer warmer fluid between the cells creating the troughs. The smooth surface without troughs is comparable to a warmer ocean without the ice sheet cells. Except for the impact craters at Venera Terra these two scenes look very similar. |
I suppose then, I no longer see the polygonal cells as a volcano's caldera but there are similarities.
Instead, the polygonal cells at SP are more like an ice sheet breakup floating on an ocean of N2. In either case subsurface heat is required. On Earth, seasonal changes cause ice sheet breakups and seasonal changes on Pluto probably play a large role in creating this Pluto ice sheet breakup as well. |
The N2 is not spilling over the crater lip it is pushing up from below just like we see at Elliot and Bread Slice craters this equals subsurface N2 pressure. You can also see how the N2 is moving diagonally to the NE in this image with a somewhat aggressive nature and smooth surface. This all points to deep subsurface material under the red tholin covered old cratered rock hard land ice pushing upwards and outward into the shallower less active SP. |
Below the surface, nitrogen is expanding, its under pressure its most active in this area but it can break through and crack the land's bedrock water ice at any weak location.
Earth's counterpart to this crater would be something like hot springs where warm or even hot pools of water bubble up from below ground. The large smooth "V" shaped pit in the southern section of SP is most likely caused by a large hot spot. One could argue that it is one vast ice sheet indicating it is a cold spot but if that were the case there would be evidence of cratering. |