Blue skies, frozen water detected on Pluto

Http://phys.org/news/2015-10-blue-sky-red-ice-pluto.html

by Mz • 11 years ago

108 8 11 years ago

phys.org

rasur3• 11 years ago

"Blue skies are seen on Earth because of the scattering of sunlight by very small particles of nitrogen."

I read this as implying Nitrogen could also be large?

ergothus• 11 years ago

IIRC, it is, for some value of "large"

(As in, way low for what you'd consider an atmosphere, but much larger than what Pluto is "supposed" to have for something of such low gravity + not-so-young.)

rasur3• 11 years ago

I think we may be at cross-purposes here.. I was thinking more of the size of a nitrogen atom rather than how much there is in the atmosphere. The size isn't going to vary substantially, is it?

claudius• 11 years ago

It appears the article is referring to tholins[1], which are actually molecules containing nitrogen rather than atomic (or even diatomic) nitrogen.

Nitrogen atoms themselves are essentially always the same size, except when either a) more neutrons have been added to the core, creating a different isotope of nitrogen (in this case the atom is still very much the same size, just heavier) or b) electrons have been added/removed from the outer shells, creating a chemically differently-behaving ion.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tholin

rasur3• 11 years ago

Thank you for the clarification. Much appreciated.

gcb0• 11 years ago

pluto has 1/6 the mass of the moon. after we mine that much (which will easily happen with the free for all that is going to happen soon) we can bring pluto into orbit around the moon and the sun proximity will instantly terraform it.

if we send a ship with a solar ion engine by now it will arrive right on time.

adrianN• 11 years ago

Good luck getting the delta v required to move a rock the size of Pluto down to our orbit.

jobigoud• 11 years ago

Around the Earth-moon system orbit, and far away, would be less infeasible. Something that big can't be stable on Moon orbit…

Firstly the Moon has mascons¹ which makes it a pain to orbit around even for small satellites.

Secondly, I don't what the Roche limit² of Pluto around the Moon would be, but I wouldn't be surprised if it overlapped with the Roche limit of Pluto around the Earth. That means that in order to not disintegrate and become a ring system of the Moon or outright crash on the surface, the body would have to be so far away from the Moon that it would disintegrate and crash or form a ring system around Earth. Tidal forces.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_concentration_%28astronom...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roche_limit

Blue skies, frozen water detected on Pluto

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