Plutopalooza July 14

Bob, your image of Barringer crater has nothing to do with what I was talking about as floor (minimal requirements for planetness).

However I grant a variance here because all who have not been there are well advised to take the trip and pay the money. It will rock your world.

What a thing.

 

that was fascinating reading, my thanks to both of you.

 

Earth has has many impacts, but most have been turned under by the Wilson cycle. Earth's moon, lacking an energetic core, presents all. Pluto's surface looks pretty clean in this regard, so we'd want to know how that happened.

I guess that ice balls have transient surfaces reformed by ??? but what do I know?

 

Apparently as much as any other Pluto expert.

 

I grew up like many thinking Pluto was the "city limit" of the solar system. Since the 90's, the confirmation of icy objects Kuiper predicted, revealed Pluto is the start of the 3rd layer of the solar system - after the rocky planets and gas giants.

 

Anyone remember the Drake equation? I'm waiting for the day when finding stars without planets becomes the exception rather than the (expected) rule.

(Except when the anti-pluto faction is allowed to declare all of them as being too large or small to be a planet).

 

side bar, i watched 'to catch a comet' on pbs today, fascinating. never heard of it.

 

FL, Drake's daughter is still 'in the game' and defending the equation. It might be missing a couple of factors though.

Why would tech-capable ETs wish to come here anyway? Granted we have scenery (one example posted above) and fascinating people (we're fired!), but is that enough to justify the effort. Credit Seth Shostak for that.

Are we sure we'd notice if they were here? It is hard to predict the future of technology like 'cloaking' for one example.Credit any number of tin foils for that, but just because it sounds goofy does not mean it could not happen.

Years ago, in a Toyota R&D office, some mysterious fellow plunked down a TRW patent on a desk. Torquer and speeder. Said "see what you guys can do with that" and left. That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

 

Bob @23. Wile E. Coyote has ACME technology to accelerate him to transonic speeds. With powder burns, but whatever. So, as you are the scientist on call, what planetary G (from that, M), establishes an escape velocity of let's say 2000 km/hr?

I expect the conclusion will be that Pluto is a planet that can keep cartoon characters attached.

 

The serious science question here is to what extent New Horizons sensor suite can inform causes for the smooth complexion. Answer might be NOPE. The eggheads knew they were just going to zoom on by, so they settled for 'imaging' across wide spectra. So, when the databits arrive we will know what the snow is made of. I'm hoping for ethanol, and I know y'all will support that.

Methane and Nitrogen? BORING.

 

FL @28 solar accretion not not appear very efficient. A lot of stuff ends up orbiting/planetary, not sucked into the central Hoover. What is weird to me, about Kepler and the other planet sniffing, is that a typical solar system has one or more big boys (like Jupiter) in really close. How does that work? How can they persist against inevitable wobbles?

We still, mostly, lack the horsepower to detect earth-sized planets. Behind the veil, so 'Drake' as stated remains poorly constrained.

But Wth with big planets in tight solar orbits? I don't get that.

 

Because we starting looking with the "big planet in tight orbit" instruments first. It may not be a common thing if every star has lots of planets around it. In our own solar system, Jupiter and Saturn were easy to find. Pluto was not. Extent the same limitations to other star systems.

 

But the available planet factor is just starting to come out from behind the veil....and it looks to be a much bigger factor than original opinions were assigning.

 

As FL_P_D mentioned, these are the very easiest to detect. Don't take them as typical or representative. They come from a biased sample set.

 

I think tochatihu was commenting more on how close they were to the star in their orbits.
Which could make them easier to detect than any planets in farther orbits.

The Sol system is our home, but that doesn't make it the norm in terms of solar systems.

 

Our history of knowing so little about Pluto viewed from Earth and the Hubble should make us very, very careful about what we say about exo-solar planets.

 

The main way exoplanets are found are occultation (star brightness changes) and Doppler (star spectrum changes).

I think it would be possible, and interesting, to determine the maximum distance at which either could detect an Earth sized planet in a 1 AU orbit.

Because for starts more distant than that, the veil is still down.

Meanwhile Hawking has got 100 million funding for 'dish time' to detect radio that ET has neglected to conceal.
Intelligent Life In Our Galaxy? Stephen Hawking Says 'We Must Know' : The Two-Way : NPR