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A spectacular recently-released image of the surface of the dwarf planet,
Pluto, is yet again sending planetary scientists back to the drawing board.
In the informally named Vega Terra Region,
lies a dramatic field of craters with bright rims and blackened floors.
Investigators with NASA's New Horizons team have dubbed the features
'Halo' Craters due to the bright methane seen on the craters' rims.
A stark contrast to the darker surrounding terrain.
In early close-up images of Pluto, one of the first mysteries
to confront planetary scientist was the lack of expected craters.
Since astronomers have for decades used crater counting to assess the age of rocky planets,
the dwarf planet's estimated age came in as low as 100 million years.
However, in his recently released image, stretching well beyond the region
of so-called halo craters to which NASA has drawn our attention,
we see a surface that resembles many other rocky bodies in the solar system.
We see smaller craters that appear preferentially on the rims of larger craters.
We see neat circular craters with pinched up rims and cleanly excavated floors.
We see craters with central peaks
and so-called bullseye craters with smaller craters directly in their centers.
And we see parallel channels cutting across the heavily cratered terrain.
A site familiar on another planetary surfaces including both Mars and our own Moon.
Circular craters on rocky bodies, it's a longstanding puzzle in planetary science.
On the Moon, more than 90% of circular craters
demand that the impacting objects strike from directly above.
As discussed in many previous episodes,
circular craters are routinely produced by electrical discharges
which always strike the surface from directly above.
Yet perhaps the greatest question this image poses
is not a new one for planetary scientists.
If craters are caused by random impacts over geologic time,
why should they appear selectively in regions or hemispheres?
Hemispheric dichotomies can be found on most heavily cratered planets and moons.
Most notably the planet Mars,
whose massively cratered south pole stands in stark contrast to its north pole
which had up to 6 miles of material excavated and displays few craters.
Both hemispheric dichotomies and selective regional cratering
could be due to planetary scale electrical discharges
with anodic and cathodic regions being sculpted differently.
Also of interest are the channels we see in this region on Pluto.
These features resemble the parallel channels seen on Mars and other planets and moons.
Consider the image on your screen of an electrical discharge to a surface of dust,
taken by experimentalist D. Z. Parker.
Both the circular craters seen on Pluto
and the parallel channels are the distinct trademarks of electrical discharges.
This image is only the latest of many geological puzzles
that the New Horizons mission has revealed to date.
In 2015, early images from the mission revealed features that look like sand dunes.
That's a big problem since Pluto's atmosphere is far too thin and weak at present
to generate the necessary winds for dune creation.
Lead investigator Alan Stern said of the discovery;
"We've detected vast fields of features that look like dunes.
Now we are being careful to say they look like dunes.
They may or may not actually be dunes. Their origin is under debate".
In past episodes, when reporting on similar improbable dunes
on various bodies in the solar system, including the comet 67 P,
we've discussed the ability of electric fields to produce ionic winds
that can be more efficient than mechanical winds at creating dunes and dune-like features.
In the case of Pluto, at its distance from the Sun,
it seems highly unlikely that dune creation is ongoing.
Rather, the features may have been formed in the planet's electrical capture
remaining frozen in place to this day.
Another early surprise for the New Horizons team was the discovery of mountains
as tall as 11,000 feet on the tiny Kuiper Belt planet.
As described in the NASA report;
"Unlike the icy moons of giant planets, Pluto cannot be heated
by gravitational interactions with a much larger planetary body.
Some other process must be generating the mountainous landscape.
This may cause us to rethink what powers geological activity on many other icy worlds."
Investigator John Spencer says of Pluto's mountains;
"We know the surface of Pluto is covered with nitrogen ice, methane ice, carbon monoxide ice.
You can't make mountains out of that stuff, it's just too soft.
It doesn't have the strength to make mountains.
So we are seeing here the bedrock, or the 'bed-ice' of Pluto.
Water-ice is cold enough at Pluto temperatures to hold up big mountains,
and that's what we think we're seeing here."
A simpler answer is that the mountains are composed of rock
and that both the mountains and the terrain around them
were formed in the same electrical event.
This is precisely what is proposed in the Electric Universe theory,
as developed by physicist Wal Thornhill
who claims that the gas giants were captured by the Sun at different times.
In his view, the rings are the remnants of the electrical capture process
with Saturn's spectacular, yet ephemeral rings,
testifying to that planet's recent capture.
As a gas giant approaches the Sun,
its gravitational sphere of influence would shrink,
resulting in the progressive loss of its outer satellites.
So the minor planets in the Kuiper belt like Pluto and its moons
are likely to have traits seen elsewhere in the Solar System.
Pluto is a rocky body with its atmosphere recently frozen to its surface."
Based on its findings today, it seems clear that NASA's New Horizons mission
will continue to present more puzzles.
But new theoretical pathways are waiting to be explored in our Electric Universe.
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