Pluto originated with the merger of a billion comets, scientists
Pluto / Photo from the website slashgear.com
The answer is the researchers found in the “heart” of the planet
26.05.18 240000
Because of the unusual composition of the planet Pluto scientists have concluded that it could occur at the confluence of the many, many comets and other small celestial bodies.
About it reports “RIA Novosti” with reference to the scientific edition of Icarus.
“We have developed a new theory of the formation of Pluto, “giant comet model.” It relies on a simple observation – his “heart” contains as much nitrogen ice, as it should be on the planet, if it had been cut out of a billion small celestial bodies similar to the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko,” said Christopher Glein from the southwest research Institute in San Antonio, United States.
When the probe New Horizons was closer to Pluto and its family of satellites in June last year, the first and most unusual feature of the surface, which was discovered by scientists, was the famous “heart” of Pluto, the plain Companion, painted in a lighter tone than the rest of the surface of the dwarf planet.
Further study of data from automatic stations showed that this “heart” has a complex structure.
For example, it was found that it consists of two parts with different chemical composition, and that in the lower part of the “heart” is dominated by water ice, and its surface is covered with more soft and flowing ice from the frozen nitrogen and carbon monoxide. This structure is the “heart” and its unusual position on the equator of Pluto led scientists to wonder how it could be formed.
- See ALSO: Pluto is a new Mars – NASA
As noted, Glan, there are several theories that explain the existence of this mysterious structure that Pluto has faced recently with a large asteroid that led to a series of highly unusual climate change, as a result of which a large part of the planet’s atmosphere turned to ice and fill the dent.
Glen, and his colleagues found that this may not be the case, trying to assess the total mass of nitrogen ice on Pluto and uncover the story of his contact with the planet, analyzing the data collected by New Horizons and Rosetta, his sister, studying the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko in the years 2014-2016.
As shown by their calculations, on Pluto today there are about 420 quadrillion tons of nitrogen. This is significantly more than the “norm” for that part of the Solar system, where presumably it originated, given that for all time of its existence, the planet has lost 20 times more gas than is now present in its atmosphere.
Trying to find the answer to this question, Glen and his team drew attention to two interesting facts, combining the Pluto and the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko – they possess virtually identical density and chemical composition. This gave them the idea that “strojjblok” Pluto is not formed at its current orbit, and was brought from the outskirts of the Solar system from the Oort cloud, the birthplace of virtually all existing comets.
According to their calculations, for the formation of Pluto took about a billion of similar-sized objects with the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which is unlikely but possible, given the “population density” in the early Solar system and how comets may have been influenced by migrating giant planets.
Like “comet” scenario of the birth of the planet, as noted, Glan automatically solves many oddities associated with the chemical composition of Pluto – for example, the absence of his bowels large stocks of carbon monoxide and hints that in its depths there is a giant ocean of liquid water or poludnitsa.
Earlier, scientists explained the extreme cold on Pluto.
The radius of the orbit is on average 5 billion kilometers, but on Pluto it’s cold not only because the Sun’s rays barely reach it; a big role in the cooling of the dwarf planet is its atmosphere.
When the probe New Horizons flew to Pluto, he measured the temperature of its atmosphere. It was 30 degrees below the calculated – -203 ºC, only 70 degrees above absolute zero.
Explaining why Pluto’s so cold, planetary scientists expect to explain atmospheric processes on other icy worlds – satellites of the giant planets of Enceladus and Europe, as well as exoplanets.