Mi-go nuclear reactor?
Pluto's emitting X-rays, and NASA doesn't quite know how
The Chandra space telescope has spotted X-rays emanating from Pluto. What? That's “cold, dead, former planet Pluto with no magnetic field”, to most of us: orbiting between 4.4 billion km and 7.4 billion km from the sun out in the Kuiper belt, with no way to generate heat. That Pluto. Since we don't suppose the former-planet …
COMMENTS
-
-
Tuesday 20th September 2016 08:06 GMT Voland's right hand
My exact thought
Somewhere, on an observation vessel's bridge in the shade of a dwarf planet in an obscure solar system way in the middle of nowhere in the Galaxy backwater: "OK, which retard forgot to turn on the additional shielding on the main reactor. So much for the cloaking technology, the locals have noticed us".
-
-
Tuesday 20th September 2016 07:36 GMT John Smith 19
1 word. Triboelectrification.
Apparently a piece of sellotape being pulled from its backing in a vacuum chamber can release 15KeV X Rays.
I have no f**king clue how that works but DARPA funded a project and it's apparently the basis of the SoA in hand held Xray flourescence metal analysers.
So there are other ways to make Xrays (or if you're into chip lithography Xtreme UV) other than the classic than banging electrons into lumps of metal (AKA Coolidge Tube) and plasma's (which turn out to only be good for "soft" Xrays into the 100s of eV's.
-
-
-
Tuesday 20th September 2016 15:30 GMT Doctor_Wibble
Re: 1 word. Triboelectrification.
> Tribbles are sessile. They cannot "run around".
Wrong universe. These ones have legs.
At an evolutionary level, they were fcked as a species and the results of that whole-species encounter was a cross-breed with tentacles that eventually developed into legs from the few that remained after they were nearly all abducted by aliens for use in dodgy holo-vids.
P.S. 'trilling' on the other hand is an entirely consensual activity which I'm sure Dax would know all about.
-
-
Tuesday 20th September 2016 15:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: 1 word. Triboelectrification.
I think the real problem here isn't about which mechanism is producing the x-rays but where the energy in those x-rays is coming from (in JS19's Sellotape example the energy in the x-rays originates in the kinetic energy required to pull the tape from whatever it's stuck to).
The only obvious candidate is the solar wind but Pluto is both too small, and the intensity of the solar wind, at that distance from Sol, too weak for Pluto to intercept enough energy from the solar wind to account for the amount of energy observed in the x-rays.
The ideas mentioned at the end of the article, for accounting for the discrepancy, amount to either increasing Pluto's effective cross-section, as far as capturing energy from the solar wind is concerned, or increasing the energy density of the solar wind in the vicinity of Pluto's orbit.
-
Thursday 22nd September 2016 08:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: 1 word. Triboelectrification.
@LeeE - what about extra-solar sources? Could it be that Pluto is intecepting extra-solar extremely high energy gamma rays and re-emitting at a lower energy in the x-ray spectrum? In effect making Pluto a planetary-sized version of one of those unerground particle detectors we've built? (I frankly don't know quite enough to know whether that's feasible or not).
-
-
Tuesday 20th September 2016 21:31 GMT Captain DaFt
Re: 1 word. Triboelectrification.
Makes me wonder... just how Triboelectric is frozen solid nitrogen, or ice at those low temps?
We've already seen that Pluto has active glaciers of nitrogen with mountain sized lumps of water ice 'floating' on them.
Maybe colliding water ice chunks or stress fractures in the solid nitrogen might be generating the X-rays?
-
-
-
Tuesday 20th September 2016 08:34 GMT Axman
Re: There was nothing in my horoscope about this this morning.
When the IAU demoted Pluto to dwarf planet status did they take into account the poor old astrologers (or rather, the extremely avant garde cultist section of astrologers who had managed to accept that there were more than five planets)? I bet they didn't.
And while we're on the subject, I think they made a mistake with 'dwarf planet', midget planet surely!
-
-
Wednesday 21st September 2016 01:20 GMT Long John Brass
Re: There was nothing in my horoscope about this this morning.
And while we're on the subject, I think they made a mistake with 'dwarf planet', midget planet surely!
The Politically Correct backed up with SJW's would tell you it's a "little planet".
Hey!
That's Mr Mass Challenged Oblate Spheroid to you!
-
-
-
-
Tuesday 20th September 2016 21:43 GMT Captain DaFt
Re: There was nothing in my horoscope about this this morning.
Well I'm an Ophiuchus*, and believe that no horoscope that leaves out signs can ever pretend to be accurate!**
*Yes, it's really a horoscope sign. It was left out to avoid 'unlucky 13', and to keep the signs from changing months year to year.
**Nah, I don't actually believe any of that mumbo-jumbo.
-
Tuesday 20th September 2016 21:18 GMT Mark 85
Re: There was nothing in my horoscope about this this morning.
The astrologers are pissed to begin with the recent news that NASA says the astrological signs have all changed.or maybe they haven't but just did some math... http://www.sciencealert.com/stop-freaking-out-nasa-did-not-just-change-your-zodiac-sign
-
-
-
Tuesday 20th September 2016 11:42 GMT DNTP
Re: Star Surgeon
Now in true Sector General tradition, after hitting numerous dead ends the hero of the story will make a sudden correlation between two or three pieces of trivia revealed earlier in the story, and figure out that the extra radiation was coming from two radiation-eating life-forms with congenitally defective biological shielding sneaking off into the maintenance corridors to have sex.
-
Tuesday 20th September 2016 20:27 GMT Chris G
Sooner or later
One of these jokes about aliens hiding behind Pluto or dropping into this solar system and decloaking just before announcing ' All your Onion Bhajis are belong to us' or something like it, will turn out to be true and will signal the end of mankind on this planet ( Well,apart from onion bhaji chefs who will be needed to continue turning out the galaxy's prime source of Farterium an important ingredient in FTL fuel).
-
Wednesday 21st September 2016 04:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re. aliens
Its just possible that the alien spaceship *might* be hiding behind Pluto doing repairs on its drive as X-ray emissions are one known side effect of a leaking primary intercoolant system.
As we lack the technology to help out much (this assumes it is an experimental craft and lacks shuttles with more than a 5M km range) about all we can do is send them a signal wishing them luck.
Disclaimer: I used to fix these back in '47 when they still used good old fashioned cryogenic superconductors on the drive pods not these new fangled quantum slipstream things which no-one fully understands but uses them anyway because they get 30,000,000,000N/kW and travel 0.5LY/hr.
I wonder if they've detected the emissions from New Horizons? It can't be that far away by now, although traveling quite fast its possible they could do a free return trajectory and "borrow" its RTGs.
-
-
Saturday 24th September 2016 06:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Some form of natural superconductor might be involved.
Intriguing. Do you have a link to the paper please?
I also noticed that under certain conditions laser light (specifically infrared at key wavelengths) which plausibly might be generated by an atmospheric maser-like effect could induce certain materials to superconduct at a higher temperature eg H3S.
It could also be as simple as others have said as ice cracking under pressure causing triboelectricity, the process does not need a good vacuum at all.
If lithium tantalate is involved there are any number of mechanisms of charge build-up causing ion beams which are detected as X-rays however the spectrum should reveal the mechanism.
-