Fascinating.....
and mind blowing to say the least. From Sputnik and the early space race to this. It's a shame New Horizons couldn't have orbited a few times before moving on but we can't have everything.
The latest New Horizons data blurt from the Kuiper Belt has yet again left astroboffins' flabbers gasted, this time because of its sensational revelations regarding the atmosphere of frosty freezeworld Pluto. Details about the dwarf planet's extraordinary surface have also been revealed by NASA, with flowing nitrogen ice …
Well, actually, the pulses were fired *before* New Horizons flew past Pluto...hat tip to those who correctly calculated the travel time of the pulses so they would arrive at the correct time. And another hat tip to the New Horizons programmers who were ready to receive them
Talk about planning ahead...excellent boffinry all round!
We live on a planet orbiting a star, our Sun. If you're not interested in astronomy, it may come as a surprise to learn that the Sun is a yellow dwarf star - because there are two types of star that are yellow, most of similar size to our sun, but some are flippin' ginormous, which are called yellow giants.
Which doesn't make the Sun not a star, despite it being a yellow dwarf.
Likewise, Pluto is a dwarf planet - it's a planet, but a little or dwarf one.
Can we put the nonsense about Pluto's status to be now, please? :-}
I know about liquid nitrogen, and I thought that was the coolest anything could get.
I look at the pics and nitrogen glaciers and then it hits me : when the heck does nitrogen freeze ? It's already bloody cold when it's liquid, how much cooler does it have to get to actually freeze ?
So I check it out : nitrogen is liquid below 77 K, solid below 63 K.
Not a lot of difference there.
The Universe really is mind-boggling.
> The Universe really is mind-boggling
You need to remember that the melting point and boiling point you quote are at a standard atmospheric pressure of roughly 1 bar. A cursory look at the N phase diagram of shows that at pluto's atmospheric pressure of 10 microbars, nitrogen sublimates between gas and solid without an intermediate liquid phase.
Mind you, the physical chemistry of terrestrial snow and ice is surprisingly complex and still not completely understood. The behaviour of Pluto's icy, hydrocarbon-y, nitrogen-y snow is likely to equally challenging to understand in detail.
"The behaviour of Pluto's icy, hydrocarbon-y, nitrogen-y snow is likely to equally challenging to understand in detail."
They Shall Have Stars - James Blish, 1956, so the sort of behavior ice might exhibit in non-terrestrial environments was being thought about at least way back when.
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Because of the cosmic abundance of hydrogen, we find carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen as their hydrides. Also, elements with odd atomic number (nitrogen) are less abundant than those of even number (carbon, oxygen).
Perhaps NASA have reasons for suggesting the ice is nitrogen rather than, say, methane. Or perhaps some mixture of methane, ammonia, and water. But please would someone give those reasons.
"Perhaps NASA have reasons for suggesting the ice is nitrogen rather than, say, methane. Or perhaps some mixture of methane, ammonia, and water. But please would someone give those reasons."
New Horizons has more than GoPro cameras. ;) Its "Ralph" and "Alice" tricorder-scanner thingamabobs have spectroscopic functions that would be able to assess the surface composition.
The article suggests that nitrogen glaciers might produce enough pressure to sustain a liquid nitrogen subsurface layer, but that's less likely than finding water under ice.
Like most substances, the liquid form of nitrogen is less dense than the solid. Nitrogen ice would try to sink in liquid. The liquid would probably seep up through overlying glaciers to evaporate on the low-pressure surface. Geysers are possible, though.
Which is shame, I always liked the liquid nitrogen lakes and oceans theorized for Triton before Voyager got there.
http://www.psi.edu/sites/default/files/images/staff/hartmann/pic-cat/images/199.jpg