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In the previous Space News episode,
we discussed recent astonishing images of the surface of the dwarf planet Pluto.
Many other surprises have already been revealed in the data thus far released,
from NASA's New Horizons mission.
Today, physicist Eugene Bagashov discusses what we have learned thus far
about Pluto's atmosphere and the larger Plutonian environment.
"Although we're still a long way away from obtaining the full data
from New Horizon's probe, let alone more or less thorough analysis of it,
already there are couple of things that look very interesting.
Let us review some of their recent findings concerning the atmosphere of Pluto.
First of all, the solar occultation measurements made by ALICE instrument
have shown that the planet's atmosphere extends to a height of at least 1,600 kilometers.
It already was known for some time that the atmosphere is big
but until now we haven't had the exact measurements of its extent.
Essentially, the idea of the occultation experiment
was to look at the setting and rising Sun through the atmosphere of Pluto
and see when the light starts and finishes to be dimmed.
It seems that at its top the atmosphere consists mostly of nitrogen,
then as we move down we see more methane and
at the lowest elevations there are some other hydrocarbons, too.
Aside from that, as was expected, the probe has detected a plasma tail
spanning for at least 100,000 kilometers behind the dwarf planet.
The full length and other parameters of this tail however, is yet to be determined.
As the solar wind is really scarce at such distances,
the region of its interaction with atmosphere and the induced cometary-like
magnetosphere of Pluto is actually big enough to encompass all of its satellites.
What was also observed during these solar occultation measurements
is some complex layered system of hazes.
These hazes are thought to be composed of condensed organic compounds
such as the proverbial tholins and other hydrocarbons.
These supposedly form from the Plutonian methane in the upper layers
of the planet's atmosphere under the influence of solar radiation.
Then they slowly settle in the planet's gravitational field,
starting to condense into droplets or some sort of snowflakes
as they move into colder atmospheric layers, forming the mentioned hazes.
One should bear in mind that the temperature profile of the Plutonian
atmosphere is supposed to be somewhat different from Earth's
(at least in comparison to our troposphere), with the temperature
rising as we move away from Pluto, not falling, as on our planet.
So during the observations, LORRI
instrument have detected the hazes as high as 130 kilometers above the surface,
with two distinct layers of haze with altitudes of 50 and 80 kilometers.
At the same time under the current theoretical assumptions it was considered
impossible for hazes to form at any height above only 30 kilometers,
because it was supposed to be too hot at these altitudes
- by Plutonian standards, of course.
So the hazes were detected almost 5 times higher up than they could be,
according to the current models of the atmosphere of Pluto.
And that is an obvious problem.
Another curious thing is the thickness of the atmosphere and the atmospheric pressure.
As the probe went to the dark side of Pluto,
REX instrument started receiving radio signals from Earth.
By the refraction or bending of those radio beams in Pluto's atmosphere,
one theoretically might derive it's thickness and the atmospheric pressure.
So if we look at the graph of Pluto's atmospheric pressure, we see an interesting picture.
The blue dots represent the stellar occultation data obtained from Earth;
that is, we observe the dimming of a star as it passes through Pluto's atmosphere
and thus through our models, we derive it's thickness and pressure.
As we can see, the pressure as derived from this method rises starting from the end
of 1980's (which was when the atmosphere of Pluto was discovered, by the way).
Actually it's quite problematic on it's own, since after the perihelion in 1989,
the pressure should start dropping as the planet starts receiving less sunlight.
It was thought that this type of behaviour was only consistent with
very high thermal inertia in a persistent nitrogen polar cap on the North Pole.
Yet, we don't see any polar cap and it's quite doubtful that such a tenuous atmosphere
could provide the inertia needed at least through regular atmosphere processes.
What's even more problematic, the REX data shows almost twice the lower atmospheric
pressure with respect to the last data point obtained from Earth:
only some 10 micro bars at best.
So, if this piece of data is accurate, it means that the atmospheric pressure
became twice less in just a couple of years, and those are Earth years,
while Pluto itself barely moved in its 248 year orbit at that time.
What could have happened there?
There are basically three possibilities that I see here.
The first one, is that the stellar occultation data is wrong.
This means that maybe the pressure wasn't increasing at all
- and we don't have any mysterious downfall to explain.
Yet, then we have obvious problems with atmospheric models
that gave us those wrong measurements.
The second one, is that the REX data is wrong.
This means that maybe the pressure is significantly higher
than this instrument had measured, and this would also mean that the models
that were used to measure the pressure with this method are flawed.
It is probably worth noting here that the New Horizons Co-Investigator Michael Summers
claims that the error in REX data could not be more than a few percent.
Third possibility is that maybe everything is right,
and we indeed observe some highly nonlinear process occurring.
That is probably too simple of a model, but it actually looks like some abstract
charging capacitor that might be pumping atmospheric pressure up from 1990 until 2014
and then undergoes a discharge releasing the pressure, unable to keep it up further.
Whether indeed there is electricity involved, I cannot say for sure.
Of course, there is also a fourth possibility that both the occultation and
REX data are wrong, but in this case we don't have anything to talk about at all.
There also was another stellar occultation measurement
made from Earth in June by SOFIA telescope.
It might help us distinguish between the options listed above,
but unfortunately it seems the data from this measurement is not available.
I also want to make a reference to previous Space News episodes on Pluto,
featuring Wal Thornhill.
There he discusses possible origins of Pluto,
for example, as one of the former moons of giant planets.
So let's consider the atmospheric component of this topic.
There are not so many bodies with atmospheres in the solar system.
Basically, if we ignore questions of atmospheric pressure and such,
we have 4 groups of planets.
The first one is 4 giant planets with their hydrogen-helium star-like atmospheres.
The second group consists of bodies with nitrogen atmospheres,
and that includes Earth, Titan, Triton and Pluto.
The third one is bodies with carbon dioxide atmospheres: Venus, Mars and Callisto.
Last and smallest one consists of bodies with oxygen atmospheres: Europa and Ganymede.
(There is also a couple of other bodies like Io for example,
which could not fit into any of these groups; and of course we also have comets.)
As we can see, bodies with nitrogen and carbon dioxide atmospheres
are scattered all over the solar system which might indicate
on some serious chaos at some point of it's evolution.
And it is not impossible that, for example Earth, Titan and Pluto
were once much closer together since their atmosphere is mostly nitrogen.
Anyway, sadly, not much is known for sure to this moment,
and the best we can do is speculate.
As for the problems listed above we might suppose, for example,
that there is an electric field that counteracts the gravity,
keeping the haze up in the atmosphere higher than it should be
and at the same time reducing the atmospheric pressure.
Although the probability that everything is that simple is quite low in my opinion.
I think Pluto yet has some aces up its sleeve that would make stuff
even more complicated and kill a couple of other models and hypotheses.
And it is not impossible we will encounter something so bizarre that we would have
to rewrite even models for atmospheric behavior on Earth and other planets, too.
The haze height and atmospheric pressure problems might be only the beginning."
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