Oatmeal?
Porridge. There fixed that for you.
NASA boffins peer at Pluto: Could it be ... is that ... OATMEAL?
NASA has released the latest data sent back by its New Horizons probe and it includes images of smooth, segmented plains, possible hydrocarbon deposits and our first look at Pluto's moon, Nix. Youtube Video Alan Stern, principal investigator of the New Horizons team, explained at a press conference on Friday that NASA had …
-
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
-
-
Saturday 18th July 2015 07:12 GMT Flocke Kroes
Re: " complex hydrocarbons that had fallen from the sky "
The solar system has plenty of fuel, but oxidiser is far more restricted (AFAIK, only available on Earth). There is lots of water which can be broken up into fuel an oxidiser - if you bring a nuclear reactor. The only big advantage of resources in space is when you want them in space and can avoid the cost of rocketing them off Earth.
Plenty of space missions make a profit. Almost all of them only went as far as Earth orbit. There were claims that tourist revenue paid for the moon landings (I have not seen real accounts, and even if true, I am sure Mickey Mouse gave a bigger financial return on investment.)
-
-
Saturday 18th July 2015 10:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
New Horizons is currently measuring as it orbits the far side of the planetoid"
The only thing New Horizons is orbiting is the centre of the galaxy (unless by a series of miraculous slingshots it gets captured by another solar system in a few thousand or million years). I think you mean it's peering at Pluto's rapidly dwindling backside?
But +1 for "planetoid"; cracking good Defender clone and a fine sample of Acornsoft's heyday. Time to fire up "BeebEm" :-)
-
-
Saturday 18th July 2015 23:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
Not at all.
You may remember the "Twilight Zone" series wherein unknown asteroids could have totally 1G gravity and a normal oxygen atmosphere.
-
-
-
Sunday 19th July 2015 00:02 GMT x 7
is
I see the cervices have been corrected.......that screws up any joke about the images being a bit smeary........
more seriously, I've been racking my brains to understand what Moore was getting at here: "Moore speculated that they were complex hydrocarbons that had fallen from the sky and been blown into crevices on Pluto's surface, noting that similar features can be found on Earth."
Just where on earth do you get buildups of complex hydrocarbons falling from the sky?
-
Monday 20th July 2015 09:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
"...bubbling up"?
I think if Sputnik Planum were really bubbling you would see some surface effects that were a wee more dramatic. I think the geophys' who thought that one up should look at what happens when you have a very still, quite thin liquid layer containing mixed components that has a heat flux passing through it for a very long time.
it creates cell-like structures which look just like what you see here. In our primordial soup it is theorised that it eventually gave rise to the first cellular structures and eventually organisms. Each cell has warm fluid rising at the centre and descending at the boundaries. Interactions between the chemicals involved create increasingly complex molecules which are eventually subject to phase changes over the temperature ranges and this can physically build 'cell walls' and this might further accelerate the process of wall building.
So yea, The surface "could have been formed last week for all we know". The centre of each cell will certainly be constantly refreshing as the edges 'subduct'. Perhaps we a looking at the first example of a Megafauna Extremophile!!! Someone just needs to go there and stir the porridge a bit before it invades Earth. Or.. just rename it to Plut-Ovum and leave any future problems for another species to worry about.
BTW: I wonder if the walls of these cells are like hydrocarbon biscuit. Mining them and ship them back to Earth and you could market the stuff as "Manna from Heaven"! It might feed our planet until we work out how to turn Earth into the Promised Land.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
