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NASA's New Horizons mission to the dwarf planet Pluto
has provided scientists on Earth with countless puzzles and mysteries.
From impossible sand dunes,
which were never expected on the tiny planet's frozen surface;
to equally unexpected giant mountains;
to surprising absence of so-called "impact craters"
and selective regional cratering with highly circular craters
not to be expected on any Kuiper Belt object.
The Plutonian moons have proved equally surprising, such as the moon Charon
with it's puzzling troughs and trenches stretching for hundreds of miles.
And now, a team working with the Chandra X-ray Observatory
has reported perhaps the greatest surprise about Pluto to date,
the discovery of the emission of X-rays from Pluto.
The team is also reporting that Pluto has a giant comet-like tail,
which the scientists believe maybe as much as 1,000 times the radius of Pluto.
The scientists say of Pluto's surprising X-rays:
"We have just detected, for the first time, X-rays coming from an object in our Kuiper Belt,
and learned that Pluto is interacting with the solar wind
in an unexpected and energetic fashion.
We can expect other large Kuiper Belt objects to be doing the same.
Before our observations, scientists thought it was highly unlikely
that we'd detect X-rays from Pluto."
Today, physicist Eugene Bagshov begins the first in a four-part series,
offering his analysis of the most compelling scientific data from the Plutonian system.
In the recent months, we have seen more and more data being released
and analyses being made in the wake of the historical Pluto flyby
of the New Horizons space probe.
Let us briefly review the available data in some of the publications
to see if they might provide a noble outlook on this warped planet
and maybe even clues relevant to the Electric Universe agenda.
First, I would like to discuss the visual part of the planet,
and what is happening on its surface.
When you look at Pluto, probably the first thing that catches your eye
is its incredible diversity.
We might see quite complex and strange land forms as well as more regular ones:
craters, mountains, rills, valleys, smooth plains,
"pitted uplands, bladed terrain, snakeskin terrain,"
and even something that resembles sand or snow dunes and other things like that.
So, from the first look it doesn't appear to belong in the place
where it is situated right now in our system.
Rather it looks more similar to our terrestrial planet family
or maybe Saturn's moon Titan.
In previous Space News episodes about Pluto,
we've already touched on that subject and discussed
the possible origins of this dwarf planet as a captured object,
possibly former moon of a giant planet.
So the diversity of its surface seems to support this idea,
which is consistent with the EU scenario of planetary chaos.
Probably the most distinctive feature on the whole planet,
or at least the part that we've been able to observe, is the so-called Tombaugh Regio,
a bright feature sitting slightly to the right of center of the New Horizon's encountered hemisphere
and on the opposite side of the planet, with respect to the prime meridian of Pluto.
The prime meridian is counted from the spot above which the biggest moon Charon hovers.
So, this mentioned region cannot be seen from Charon.
The brightest part of Tombaugh Regio is called the Sputnik Planum,
and in a lot of ways it's very different from all the other visible regions.
According to the spectroscopical data, Sputnik Planum terrain
is mostly composed of nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and methane ices.
We might see very bizarre cellular patterns on its surface.
From the visual data available, they seem to be a slightly convex features
separated by shallow troughs about 100 meters deep.
It is thought that this might be caused by convection,
since the mentioned ices are somewhat soft in the present conditions
and might flow almost like a very viscous liquid, creating these convective polygons.
The heat source for this convection is unknown.
Basically a few versions were proposed.
The remainder of the internal heat left from the epic of planetary formation,
the heat from radioactive elements in the deeper layers,
or maybe there were freezings of the hypothesized subsurface oceans,
which would also liberate a significant amount of latent heat.
Aside from those cellular structures,
the Sputnik Planum demonstrates another remarkable feature,
the complete absence of craters.
So, whatever it is that shapes the surface of this region, it should do it fast
and strong enough to erase the possible cratering that could have been present.
Aside from the convective resurfacing,
another acting force could be the atmospheric erosion,
mainly the sublimation and subsequent re-freezing of those ices on a daily and seasonal basis.
It is also supposed that the mixture of those 3 ices might non-trivially interact
with water ice and could possibly flow into the nearby regions,
causing some geological surface changes, pretty much like glaciers do on Earth.
I'd also like to note here that electrical erosion, of course,
might also cause the material removal and deposition,
and it is unknown whether it might play a role today or not.
At this point, we have no idea about how strong
is the electric field in Pluto's atmosphere.
But as we'll see later, we have some other evidence
that might suggest it is present there.
I'd like to venture now into some more speculation
and discuss the possible nature of the Tombaugh Regio and Sputnik Planum.
It seems likely indeed that, as the scientists suggest,
this is the planetary scale reservoir of nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide ices.
But why does it occupy this particular place?
If the atmospheric dynamics of Pluto is mostly governed by sublimation
and refreezing of ices, then they might end up anywhere on the planet.
It is actually known that the atmospheric characteristics are pretty homogeneous there,
pretty much the same all over the Pluto's globe.
So, one might expect more or less homogeneous distribution of ices,
at least over the strips of the same latitude,
and indeed we see those ices in various places
but not anywhere near that kind of quantity.
So, this leads to the question of the formation of this feature.
Maybe initially there was a significant terrain slope
and a huge basin in this part of the Planum.
Actually, the New Horizons team seems to think the same thing, I quote:
"Sputnik Planum is mostly bordered by locally higher terrain,
which suggests that it fills a topographic basin."
And later this basin could have been filled with volatiles
since the temperature on Pluto rises with altitude.
So, the terrain depressions act like refrigerators, of sorts.
NASA scientists seem to consider that some large impact event
as being the reason for Sputnik Planum formation.
Yet the two recent papers that model the ice convection
do not consider the depth of this reservoir to be more than around 10 kilometers.
But what if it's not formed by an impact, what if it's significantly deeper?
Just as a wild speculation, I'd like to note that this region is located
wide at the equator of the dwarf planet,
where the orbit of Charon and other moons lie.
And it has roughly the same diameter as Charon, a bit more than 1,000 kilometers.
Could it possibly be the very place of Charon's birth?
Maybe it was somehow torn out of Pluto or perhaps the material was just
excavated electrically during one of the chaotic events in the Pluto's past.
The same event could have led to the rich volatile loading on Pluto
and birth of its other satellites,
which have later settled closer to their current resonant orbits.
There've probably been dozens of other satellites,
which had had too unstable orbits to survive.
Although, as I mentioned earlier, the actual point above which Charon hovers
is located right on the opposite side of Pluto with respect to the Sputnik Planum.
So, if this version of their origins is correct,
there should have also been a certain period of stabilization of orbits,
possibly including strong mechanical and maybe
even electrical stresses to the respectful bodies
during which Charon eventually migrated to the opposite side of the planet
at the same time significantly slowing down Pluto's rotation.
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