June 25th, 2018
I just stumbled onto a paper written in June 2016
| convection_in_a_volatile_nitrogen-ice-rich_layer_drives_plutos_geological_vigour_mcknimwon16.pdf |
If the cells/polygons on Sputnik Planum are the surface expression of convective cells, then cell diameters (wavelengths λ) of 20–40 km imply depths to the base of the N2 ice layer in SP of about 10–20 km. This is very deep, and much deeper than any likely impact basin, especially as the surface of SP is already at least 2–3 km below the surrounding terrain (Fig. 1b). Gravity scaling the depth from basins on Iapetus20, we estimate the SP basin was initially no deeper than ~ 10 km total (that is, before filling by volatile
ices or any isostatic adjustment).
In this paper McKinnon, Nimmo, Stern et al,. say that the nitrogen polygonal cells diameter suggests a maximum depth for the Sputnik Planitia (SP) basin to be between 10 and 20 km. They further add, this is much deeper than any likely impact basin especially considering SP is already 3 km deep. Later papers put the basin depth at 6 km and then add the 3.5 km below terrain feature for a total depth of 9.5 km to account for their supposed impactor which was theoretically between 150 - 250 km in diameter and created shell thinning to form a below ground bulge in the supposed ocean to create a mythical positive gravity anomaly where one doesn't fit the terrain or the visual evidence.
Bill McKinnon quote from LPSC conference March 2016
You don't need to be very oblique to get an elliptical crater as long as your cratering efficiency is very low... Estimates for SP are very low around 2 for the transient crater that made SP. That is the impactor is about half the size of the transient crater.
A low impact angle of 5 degrees or oblique impact creating low cratering efficiency is used to explain the elongated shape of SP.
A year later March 2017 McKinnon
3 km/s impactor, hitting at 45 degrees = 150-250 km diameter impactor. Elliptical shape probably comes from impact angle
At low velocities, oblique impacts greater than 45 degrees can create ellipses. The notch in the south may also be formed by this.
At this point Bill says slow impacts at greater than 45 degree angles create oblique (elongated) shaped craters.
A slow moving impactor at an angle greater than 45 degrees (they settled on 60 degrees) is now used to explain the shape of SP.
ices or any isostatic adjustment).
In this paper McKinnon, Nimmo, Stern et al,. say that the nitrogen polygonal cells diameter suggests a maximum depth for the Sputnik Planitia (SP) basin to be between 10 and 20 km. They further add, this is much deeper than any likely impact basin especially considering SP is already 3 km deep. Later papers put the basin depth at 6 km and then add the 3.5 km below terrain feature for a total depth of 9.5 km to account for their supposed impactor which was theoretically between 150 - 250 km in diameter and created shell thinning to form a below ground bulge in the supposed ocean to create a mythical positive gravity anomaly where one doesn't fit the terrain or the visual evidence.
Bill McKinnon quote from LPSC conference March 2016
You don't need to be very oblique to get an elliptical crater as long as your cratering efficiency is very low... Estimates for SP are very low around 2 for the transient crater that made SP. That is the impactor is about half the size of the transient crater.
A low impact angle of 5 degrees or oblique impact creating low cratering efficiency is used to explain the elongated shape of SP.
A year later March 2017 McKinnon
3 km/s impactor, hitting at 45 degrees = 150-250 km diameter impactor. Elliptical shape probably comes from impact angle
At low velocities, oblique impacts greater than 45 degrees can create ellipses. The notch in the south may also be formed by this.
At this point Bill says slow impacts at greater than 45 degree angles create oblique (elongated) shaped craters.
A slow moving impactor at an angle greater than 45 degrees (they settled on 60 degrees) is now used to explain the shape of SP.
| reorientation_of_sputnik_planitia_implies_a_subsurface_ocean_on_pluto_nimmo_hamilton_mckinnon1.pdf |
In this paper written 5 months after the above paper in November of 2016, Nimmo, Mckinnon, Stern et al., suggest an impact created a bulging subsurface ocean via shell thinning by the apparent removal of 150 km of ice. The first paper says 10 km is the deepest an impactor could make the SP basin while five months later another paper infers (without actually saying it) the impactor busted through 150 km of ice to create a thin shell (ocean bulge).
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McKinnon also says the 150-250 km impactor had to hit slowly in order to create the oblique shaped pattern of SP. NASA scientists define SP's oblique shape as the perimeter of the crater created by their slow moving impactor.
However, I see this Sputnik Planitia geological feature as the entire area that has no craters. This includes the uplands and the area around Norgay Montes and Wright Mons. I also include Viking Terra as a part of this geological process. The softened land (whitw outlined area) that absorbs impacts by viscously relaxing, covering over the impact crater, is all within the same geological age (young) and is therefore influenced by the same geological processes that shape SP itself. |
White outline is the entire area that has no impacts
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Incorporating all the geologically active zones makes it obvious this entire area is formed by subsurface geology not a 4 byr old impact.
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They fully understand that an impactor like this at a slow speed ---
<<<<<<< Couldn't possibly create a subsurface bulging ocean like this. >>>>>> Yet to force feed their scenario of an impactor creating a maximum 10 km deep SP they use their errant impactor idea to imply it created a bulging subsurface ocean (i.e. thin shell) along with a positive gravity anomaly. According to them, the polygonal N2 cell sizes limit the potential depth of SP to 6 km so they claim SP nitrogen depth can't support a positive gravity anomaly but they want one so they force fit an impossible impact scenario to create an unreasonable positive gravity anomaly by claiming the impactor created a thin shell. |
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A 10 km basin is much deeper than any likely impact basin but this slow moving impactor was supposed to create an internal bulge in 150 km thick ice shell rising 78 km above the theoretical ocean. I don't know what more I can say about this as it bends reason and logic to the breaking point. But official papers are released in support of these ideas and considered valid publishable arguments.
I am literally baffled that other scientists are not calling foul on this kind of media hype science. I would be embarrassed as a scientist to be associated with this kind of sloppy speculation and yet they present complex mathematical formulas and models to support this stuff.
This NASA group of scientists are proposing a slow moving object about 200 km in diameter created a 1,300 km elongated crater 10 km deep and a 62 km thin shell of ice in a 150 km thick shell of ice making a raised bulge in a subsurface ocean that is freezing at the base of the 150 km thick shell causing expansion fractures while that same freezing ocean is liquid near the top of the 62 km thin shell creating a positive gravity anomaly that has rotated away from its gravitationally strongest pulling mass which is Charon.
Unbelievable!
I mean that literally,
this is completely UNBELIEVABLE.
I'm a big fan of experimental science, I also see the absolute value in creating models to compare with observations but this team is out on a thin limb with some of their speculative nonsense. I mean, Alan thinks the reason we aren't hearing from outer space aliens is because they live in ice ball covered water worlds and their space program only gets them far enough to drill holes in their planet's ice shell.
An Alan quote from this article.
Most extraterrestrial creatures are likely deep inside their home planets, in subsurface oceans crusted over in frozen water ice... The hypothesis could explain the lack of signals from other technologically advanced civilizations.... Perhaps the equivalent of their “space program” would simply be boring through to the frozen surface of their planet, Stern suggests.
This literally boarders on being a cult of personality.
I am literally baffled that other scientists are not calling foul on this kind of media hype science. I would be embarrassed as a scientist to be associated with this kind of sloppy speculation and yet they present complex mathematical formulas and models to support this stuff.
This NASA group of scientists are proposing a slow moving object about 200 km in diameter created a 1,300 km elongated crater 10 km deep and a 62 km thin shell of ice in a 150 km thick shell of ice making a raised bulge in a subsurface ocean that is freezing at the base of the 150 km thick shell causing expansion fractures while that same freezing ocean is liquid near the top of the 62 km thin shell creating a positive gravity anomaly that has rotated away from its gravitationally strongest pulling mass which is Charon.
Unbelievable!
I mean that literally,
this is completely UNBELIEVABLE.
I'm a big fan of experimental science, I also see the absolute value in creating models to compare with observations but this team is out on a thin limb with some of their speculative nonsense. I mean, Alan thinks the reason we aren't hearing from outer space aliens is because they live in ice ball covered water worlds and their space program only gets them far enough to drill holes in their planet's ice shell.
An Alan quote from this article.
Most extraterrestrial creatures are likely deep inside their home planets, in subsurface oceans crusted over in frozen water ice... The hypothesis could explain the lack of signals from other technologically advanced civilizations.... Perhaps the equivalent of their “space program” would simply be boring through to the frozen surface of their planet, Stern suggests.
This literally boarders on being a cult of personality.
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Turn off the hype
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Read these NASA papers, think for yourself, turn off the hype.
Once upon a time, I was taught to believe there was a god. I fell in love with the idea of a benevolent creator. In an effort to better understand and know this god, I read the bible. The problem was, the more I read the more I understood, the more I understood the more I comprehended the contradictions and fantastic fallacies presented. There was always one simple condition in knowing this god. You must have faith as a child (believe), you aren't smart enough to question your god. No matter how much it insults your reason, intellect and intelligence just believe and one day when you're dead and no longer able to reason with your intellectual intelligence, your questions will be answered. What a convenient unchallengeable system, you get answers when you're no longer able to ask questions. But while alive and able to ask questions you get no answers. You simply must have faith, believe.
Reading and understanding the bible as written and presented in the words of the authors themselves led me to question the wisdom of blind faith's requirement for understanding. It forced me to think for my self and to reason through the muddled puddle of mind control imposed by its masters of information dissemination (the authoritarian priests or preachers). It forced me to read about history to better understand the context from which the biblical stories were written. As my knowledge grew my ability to ask questions grew. The more questions I asked the more questions I had and the questions led to their own natural conclusions. The bible does not hold the answers its believers proport.
I'd been duped.
I'd been believing a fantasy, a lie.
This faith based belief system is all about mind control and manipulating the actions of others to acquire wealth and title through tithes (an expected form of taxation) mental subjugation (conforming to the expected norm even when it went contrary to the teachings of the bible it was theoretically based on).
I turned to what I then believed to be a system with checks and balances (no not politics) where truth was the ultimate aim.
I turned to science. With fervor, I decided to immerse myself in a new belief system where I would finally find truth in its purest most scrutinized form where integrity and honesty rule. I decided science is a system of testing reality and therefore must be the purest form of truth, reason. logic and understanding.
Then it happened!
I fell in love with this little world called Pluto.
I was absolutely stunned and amazed that a world without an apparent source of heat could be so alive.
I passionately pursued comprehending its complexity. I wanted to get my hands on the papers written by the ones closest to the data. Where better to go than NASA's web site, the authors and creators of the New Horizons probe would educate me. NASA's site led me to Zooniverse where I asked questions like a child hungry for knowledge. I was ignored by some, challenged by others and encouraged and guided by a few. One person above all others (polishplanetpursuer) kept stoking the fire in me and led me to create this web site. This site became the conduit where I could splatter my thoughts and questions about the information I was learning.
Initially, understanding the written words of these science papers was like reading Greek. But I was in love with Pluto and couldn't stop. I studied and learned as much of this new language as I could and along the way questions arose. More and more questions. Logic and reason began to show cracks in theories presented in the papers and I have found myself having to pull back from being enamored with scientists knowledge and realize they are humans just like religious people. We are all seeking answers, some systems encourage questions more than others but even within a system where questions have an elevated status there are some questions you're not supposed to entertain. There are profits of wisdom you are not supposed to challenge. After all, they deliver the message of truth, they are the dispensers of wisdom and knowledge. Who am I to challenge them, these creators of complex formulas and models, these educated few with their crayons and power point drawings of reality.
Most of the people that believe in god are well intentioned just like most of the scientists that build models, question reality, study the cosmos and physics peeling back the curtain and nature of reality. But as long as there are humans in the mix there will be problems with every system, its an inevitable fact. Greed and ego always raise their head, nobody is exempt no system is infallible. Funding a mission to Pluto isn't cheap and it helps to hype the media a little in order to drive interest which directly translates into money. I get it. But I'm not here to sugar coat things or ask for financial assistance. I want one thing only, I am not clouded by ego or greed, I don't need to be funded, my career and salary are not linked to my presentation of information, I have nothing to gain or loose except knowledge and that's what I'm after. My anonymity keeps me detached from ulterior motives.
Along my quest for knowledge, I've learned from Pluto that even scientists get it wrong (a lot), we are all human, there are some pretty well defended foundational truths about life but once we branch off those foundations we can pretty quickly deviate from reason. There is one foundational truth about Pluto from which I can't be moved which is this. At some point, Pluto and Charon had an eccentric orbital dance which produced tidal flex energy. I build all my other concepts off that fact. The further away from that fact I stray the more tenuous and precarious my assertions become. This is why, even though, Pluto/Charon are in circular orbits now they once were not and this can potentially be used as a time frame reference for their mutual capture as Pluto is still active and Charon's southern hemisphere is smooth meaning its interior was liquid and spilled onto the surface but having a higher surface to volume ratio and compositionally (H2O) different structure means it cooled much faster than Pluto. Pluto/Charon's poles wobble 24 degrees and this could also induce some current tidal flex energy keeping this geological engine idling for a long time.
Sputnik Planitia is a 3 km deep basin, our moon's densest side faces Earth just as Pluto's densest side likely faces Charon, basin are usually negative gravity anomalies, why argue against these facts as NASA scientists choose to do? Near surface cryovolcanic nitrogen pressurized systems exist all around Viking Terra which NASA scientists completely ignore, there are no dark mineral plume deposits meaning these volcanoes are developed from shallow thin shearing skin slip processes not 150 km deep freezing ocean processes. These are some of the strong truths from which a reasonable hypothesis describing Pluto's geology can be developed.
Falsifying data and calling it "proof" the small satellites are 4 byr old or postulating self conflicting impossible scenarios about a 4 byr old slow impact reaching down to a 150 km ocean producing a positive gravity anomaly are not reasonable, logical, believable paths to follow. Adhering to a Pluto/Charon 20 year old mutual impact model which doesn't cause Pluto or Charon to differentiate but then use that concept as supportive evidence for a radiogenically hot core in turn building a vast ocean to support a positive gravity anomaly created by a slow moving body only capable of at most excavating 10 km of material from a 150 km ice shell to defend an errant impact concept is stepping into the realm of "have faith as a child". Just believe what I say don't question it. I am the lord of Pluto wisdom follow my commands and you will be blessed with acknowledgement, accolades of praise, employment and the respect of your peers. All that's required is that you bend the knee, kiss the ring and align your truth (belief) with mine as we distribute the gospel of Pluto to the world. This is cult like behavior or at the very least fear based compliance.
Alan and team have done more to elevate my passion and love for science than any other. As much as I find fault with their contradicting conclusions and ego driven errors, I keep reminding myself, they are only human. How would I react if one day the entire world looked to me to answer questions about a newly explored world where everything we see is unprecedented, different, unknown. I would naturally rely on my past assertions (Pluto/Charon collided) and defend them, I would have to develop theories based on my past training utilizing cold trapping, impacts, oceans, sublimation pits etc... As much as I disagree with a great deal of their sloppy science, I understand the processes that lead to these actions, however, stealing credit for my work is a whole other subject. That and falsifying data on the crater count charts is just so wrong as to be inexcusable.
I believe a strong foundation of rock solid concepts is the best place to construct a base of knowledge.
I believe NASA's foundation is made of straw.
I believe I'm done with their media hype pseudoscience.
I believe the lords of Pluto wisdom are not so wise.
I believe that, unfortunately, this NASA team has really dropped the ball.
Respectfully, I do not believe most of their theories.
I am, however, angered by their theft and deceit.
I really don't want to be one of those people that is overly critical of NASA scientists but when they take credit for my observations and intentionally manipulate data it makes it too easy for me to fall into that group. They are human just like the rest of us, doing the best they can with what they have.
In some cases, I believe a child could do better.
A case in point -
Alien space program's are limited to boring holes in icy worlds, that's why they aren't communicating with us.
Please!
What kind of audience is Alan playing to with comments like that?
Oh that's right!
An uneducated, uninformed, non reading, media hype, 15 second blurb, non thinking cult of believers and by my guestimates that covers about 90% of the world.
If you are reading this then you are either eager for alternative explanations or you work at NASA and are looking for the best way to protect your cult leaders. In either case.
Don't be someone else's puppet, think for yourself!
Once upon a time, I was taught to believe there was a god. I fell in love with the idea of a benevolent creator. In an effort to better understand and know this god, I read the bible. The problem was, the more I read the more I understood, the more I understood the more I comprehended the contradictions and fantastic fallacies presented. There was always one simple condition in knowing this god. You must have faith as a child (believe), you aren't smart enough to question your god. No matter how much it insults your reason, intellect and intelligence just believe and one day when you're dead and no longer able to reason with your intellectual intelligence, your questions will be answered. What a convenient unchallengeable system, you get answers when you're no longer able to ask questions. But while alive and able to ask questions you get no answers. You simply must have faith, believe.
Reading and understanding the bible as written and presented in the words of the authors themselves led me to question the wisdom of blind faith's requirement for understanding. It forced me to think for my self and to reason through the muddled puddle of mind control imposed by its masters of information dissemination (the authoritarian priests or preachers). It forced me to read about history to better understand the context from which the biblical stories were written. As my knowledge grew my ability to ask questions grew. The more questions I asked the more questions I had and the questions led to their own natural conclusions. The bible does not hold the answers its believers proport.
I'd been duped.
I'd been believing a fantasy, a lie.
This faith based belief system is all about mind control and manipulating the actions of others to acquire wealth and title through tithes (an expected form of taxation) mental subjugation (conforming to the expected norm even when it went contrary to the teachings of the bible it was theoretically based on).
I turned to what I then believed to be a system with checks and balances (no not politics) where truth was the ultimate aim.
I turned to science. With fervor, I decided to immerse myself in a new belief system where I would finally find truth in its purest most scrutinized form where integrity and honesty rule. I decided science is a system of testing reality and therefore must be the purest form of truth, reason. logic and understanding.
Then it happened!
I fell in love with this little world called Pluto.
I was absolutely stunned and amazed that a world without an apparent source of heat could be so alive.
I passionately pursued comprehending its complexity. I wanted to get my hands on the papers written by the ones closest to the data. Where better to go than NASA's web site, the authors and creators of the New Horizons probe would educate me. NASA's site led me to Zooniverse where I asked questions like a child hungry for knowledge. I was ignored by some, challenged by others and encouraged and guided by a few. One person above all others (polishplanetpursuer) kept stoking the fire in me and led me to create this web site. This site became the conduit where I could splatter my thoughts and questions about the information I was learning.
Initially, understanding the written words of these science papers was like reading Greek. But I was in love with Pluto and couldn't stop. I studied and learned as much of this new language as I could and along the way questions arose. More and more questions. Logic and reason began to show cracks in theories presented in the papers and I have found myself having to pull back from being enamored with scientists knowledge and realize they are humans just like religious people. We are all seeking answers, some systems encourage questions more than others but even within a system where questions have an elevated status there are some questions you're not supposed to entertain. There are profits of wisdom you are not supposed to challenge. After all, they deliver the message of truth, they are the dispensers of wisdom and knowledge. Who am I to challenge them, these creators of complex formulas and models, these educated few with their crayons and power point drawings of reality.
Most of the people that believe in god are well intentioned just like most of the scientists that build models, question reality, study the cosmos and physics peeling back the curtain and nature of reality. But as long as there are humans in the mix there will be problems with every system, its an inevitable fact. Greed and ego always raise their head, nobody is exempt no system is infallible. Funding a mission to Pluto isn't cheap and it helps to hype the media a little in order to drive interest which directly translates into money. I get it. But I'm not here to sugar coat things or ask for financial assistance. I want one thing only, I am not clouded by ego or greed, I don't need to be funded, my career and salary are not linked to my presentation of information, I have nothing to gain or loose except knowledge and that's what I'm after. My anonymity keeps me detached from ulterior motives.
Along my quest for knowledge, I've learned from Pluto that even scientists get it wrong (a lot), we are all human, there are some pretty well defended foundational truths about life but once we branch off those foundations we can pretty quickly deviate from reason. There is one foundational truth about Pluto from which I can't be moved which is this. At some point, Pluto and Charon had an eccentric orbital dance which produced tidal flex energy. I build all my other concepts off that fact. The further away from that fact I stray the more tenuous and precarious my assertions become. This is why, even though, Pluto/Charon are in circular orbits now they once were not and this can potentially be used as a time frame reference for their mutual capture as Pluto is still active and Charon's southern hemisphere is smooth meaning its interior was liquid and spilled onto the surface but having a higher surface to volume ratio and compositionally (H2O) different structure means it cooled much faster than Pluto. Pluto/Charon's poles wobble 24 degrees and this could also induce some current tidal flex energy keeping this geological engine idling for a long time.
Sputnik Planitia is a 3 km deep basin, our moon's densest side faces Earth just as Pluto's densest side likely faces Charon, basin are usually negative gravity anomalies, why argue against these facts as NASA scientists choose to do? Near surface cryovolcanic nitrogen pressurized systems exist all around Viking Terra which NASA scientists completely ignore, there are no dark mineral plume deposits meaning these volcanoes are developed from shallow thin shearing skin slip processes not 150 km deep freezing ocean processes. These are some of the strong truths from which a reasonable hypothesis describing Pluto's geology can be developed.
Falsifying data and calling it "proof" the small satellites are 4 byr old or postulating self conflicting impossible scenarios about a 4 byr old slow impact reaching down to a 150 km ocean producing a positive gravity anomaly are not reasonable, logical, believable paths to follow. Adhering to a Pluto/Charon 20 year old mutual impact model which doesn't cause Pluto or Charon to differentiate but then use that concept as supportive evidence for a radiogenically hot core in turn building a vast ocean to support a positive gravity anomaly created by a slow moving body only capable of at most excavating 10 km of material from a 150 km ice shell to defend an errant impact concept is stepping into the realm of "have faith as a child". Just believe what I say don't question it. I am the lord of Pluto wisdom follow my commands and you will be blessed with acknowledgement, accolades of praise, employment and the respect of your peers. All that's required is that you bend the knee, kiss the ring and align your truth (belief) with mine as we distribute the gospel of Pluto to the world. This is cult like behavior or at the very least fear based compliance.
Alan and team have done more to elevate my passion and love for science than any other. As much as I find fault with their contradicting conclusions and ego driven errors, I keep reminding myself, they are only human. How would I react if one day the entire world looked to me to answer questions about a newly explored world where everything we see is unprecedented, different, unknown. I would naturally rely on my past assertions (Pluto/Charon collided) and defend them, I would have to develop theories based on my past training utilizing cold trapping, impacts, oceans, sublimation pits etc... As much as I disagree with a great deal of their sloppy science, I understand the processes that lead to these actions, however, stealing credit for my work is a whole other subject. That and falsifying data on the crater count charts is just so wrong as to be inexcusable.
I believe a strong foundation of rock solid concepts is the best place to construct a base of knowledge.
I believe NASA's foundation is made of straw.
I believe I'm done with their media hype pseudoscience.
I believe the lords of Pluto wisdom are not so wise.
I believe that, unfortunately, this NASA team has really dropped the ball.
Respectfully, I do not believe most of their theories.
I am, however, angered by their theft and deceit.
I really don't want to be one of those people that is overly critical of NASA scientists but when they take credit for my observations and intentionally manipulate data it makes it too easy for me to fall into that group. They are human just like the rest of us, doing the best they can with what they have.
In some cases, I believe a child could do better.
A case in point -
Alien space program's are limited to boring holes in icy worlds, that's why they aren't communicating with us.
Please!
What kind of audience is Alan playing to with comments like that?
Oh that's right!
An uneducated, uninformed, non reading, media hype, 15 second blurb, non thinking cult of believers and by my guestimates that covers about 90% of the world.
If you are reading this then you are either eager for alternative explanations or you work at NASA and are looking for the best way to protect your cult leaders. In either case.
Don't be someone else's puppet, think for yourself!