PLUTO, BITCHES

so is pluto still a planet?

  On 7/15/2015 at 3:06 AM, yek said:

so is pluto still a planet?

"in its 2006 vote to reclassify pluto, the IAU came up with its first-ever definition of 'planet,' which includes three criteria. first, it must orbit the sun, second it must be more or less round, and third, it must "clear the neighborhood" around its orbit. pluto meets the first two, but falls short of the third, crossing the orbit of neptune and those of other objects in the kuiper belt."

so unless the IAU reverse the definition of what a planet is, pluto remains a dwarf planet, unless you live in almaogordo where the mayor has said fuck the IAU

  On 7/15/2015 at 1:32 AM, modey said:

 

  On 7/14/2015 at 10:19 PM, Braintree said:

 

  On 7/14/2015 at 4:23 PM, zkreso said:

That thing is moving 14 km/s? Holy shit. That's more than 40 times the speed of sound.

 

I believe that's roughly two and a half times the speed of sound. The speed of sound is 340.29 m/s (34.029 km/s).

 

no, zkreso is correct. 1 km = 1000 m, so 14000 / 340.29 = 41.1413794

  On 7/14/2015 at 6:44 PM, Goiter Sanchez said:

Getting your remains transported to the planet you discovered = Most IDM 2015

omg pls

 

Back to math class with me.

  On 7/15/2015 at 5:17 AM, Nebraska said:

 

  On 7/15/2015 at 3:06 AM, yek said:

so is pluto still a planet?

 

"in its 2006 vote to reclassify pluto, the IAU came up with its first-ever definition of 'planet,' which includes three criteria. first, it must orbit the sun, second it must be more or less round, and third, it must "clear the neighborhood" around its orbit. pluto meets the first two, but falls short of the third, crossing the orbit of neptune and those of other objects in the kuiper belt."

 

so unless the IAU reverse the definition of what a planet is, pluto remains a dwarf planet, unless you live in almaogordo where the mayor has said fuck the IAU

 

good ole' alamogordo, the desert town of the buried ET atari cartridges, the white sands missile range, and a shroud of turin exhibit in a mall for some random ass reason

i usually visit nearby cloudcroft every year, it's an oddly beautiful area of the U.S. - I listened to Tomorrow's Harvest out there a lot, very fitting

  On 7/14/2015 at 11:35 PM, Nebraska said:

 

  On 7/14/2015 at 10:37 PM, very honest said:

and the new orion space craft is supposed to be taking a boulder from an asteroid at some point. maybe someone will send something to check out that bright light recently found on ceres? a chunk of diamond the size of a city maybe?

 

 

btw: i thought it would take months to download the hi res images, but you're saying it could be as quick as tomorrow? damn- wireless connection has really improved these days if it takes a mere 48hrs to get hi res data from pluto to earth. that's elevates the situation to god like baller levels

 

it will take 16 months for all the data to get back but high res shots from the closest point are expected today.

  On 7/15/2015 at 6:32 PM, very honest said:

it will take 16 months for all the data to get back but high res shots from the closest point are expected today.

thanks for the info. below, from pluto, with love

wow NEW PICTURE, the surface looks so coool

http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/the-icy-mountains-of-pluto

the press conference with lots of info, worth a watch if you are into this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX9I1KyNa8M

  On 7/15/2015 at 6:48 PM, Nebraska said:

missed opportunity there

fucking fantastic, that closeup looks a lot like the "knobby" terrain on Callisto (Jupiter moon). Neat that there's so few craters. Activity can't be tidally driven like it is on Io/Europa/Enceladus, since Pluto and Charon are tidally locked, and bollocks is it driven by internal heat. A young surface is not too surprising though since it's likely subjected to a lot of annual turnover of N2, CH4 ices which would erode a lot of features. Wonder how the knobby stuff happens, perhaps some kind of diapiring of less dense ices, or perhaps that's just the pattern you get from countless rounds of annual precipitation and sublimation

PS lol tri

First close-up of Pluto...

wow! i was expecting a mostly featureless ice ball but pluto has some seriously complex terrain.

i think they actually missed some of the most interesting stuff as it rotated out of view before the craft got close enough for high-rez imaging. i wonder why they didn't put New Horizons in orbit? you spend 9 years getting there you might as well stay for a little bit.

I'm guessing they would've had to take a different route to get there in order to go into orbit, and it would've taken a lot longer.

It also gets to go investigate the Kuiper Belt now as well.

It would take a large amount of fuel to slow down in order to be captured into orbit, since Pluto has such a low gravitational pull. Same thing with what they needed to do with Messenger around Mercury. But I guess it also depends on what your objectives are. I would have preferred an orbit as well... They may need a reason to go back in a few years :D

yeah the thing was going extremely fast after being slingshotted around jupiter

I find it fascinating that we send out probes with principles that Newton came up with almost 300 years ago.

  On 7/16/2015 at 2:06 PM, azatoth said:

I find it fascinating that we send out probes with principles that Newton came up with almost 300 years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QBv2CFTSWU

  On 7/16/2015 at 2:06 PM, azatoth said:

I find it fascinating that we send out probes with principles that Newton came up with almost 300 years ago.

Yes, so do I. But how stunning is it to think that back then "scientists" questioned the world around them that had always been the way it was. To question gravity for instance must have been unfathomable at that time. And that's just three centuries ago; Aristarchos of Samos proposed the heliocentric model in ancient Greece, even understanding stars to be other suns at great distances. An idea only proven more than 1500 years later.

galileo was permanently put under house arrest by the catholic church during the inquisition because he said the earth went around the sun.

socrates, who said the earth is a ball, was put to death by the state for refusing to recognize the gods and corrupting the youth.

btw check the ice mountains of pluto in ravishing 3d

http://i.imgur.com/ZiRD56E.gifv

Pluto for 2015?

space is the place

cheers for all the graphics, insane viewing

pluto's terrain is not easy to explain

weird how i find myself more interested in pluto than charon. charon is only marginally smaller. some kind of prejudice i need to work on regarding dominant gravitational bodies.

apparently geologists are baffled and stunned about this odd-shaped mountain on charon that sits in a depression, as though charon were a pin cushion and someone stuck this ninja-star thing into it:

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/.a/6a00d8341bf7f753ef01bb085422b9970d-pi

it only seems to make sense from a defensive point of view, a massive base surrounded by a moat-like depression, to defend themselves from the trough-people of pluto, perhaps