The ice mountains of Pluto. What's really interesting about this is that the surfaces of both Pluto and Charon appear to be relatively young, suggesting recent geological activity.
We are receiving absolutely stunning information from the space probe, and what is being shown and discussed now is a tiny fraction of what we will ulimately learn. Major discoveries are being made, some entirely unexpected, that will take years to understand entirely. We could live on Pluto. That sounds impossible, I know, but if there is water there in massive quantities, then someday in the far future (assuming we don't destroy ourselves first) humanity will live and do research on that "dwarf" planet. I am so proud of the scientific community that has pulled this off. Incredible. Simply incredible, and the probe will continue to send us information for a long time. Of Pluto, its moons, and far beyond. What an exciting time to be alive.
I'm still amazed at the info we are getting about Pluto. No one believed that Pluto would be so varied and I think the prevailing view up until two months ago was that it was going to be one big dirty snowball in a deep freeze. What we are finding out now is that Pluto is actually geologically active. Just shows how little we know of our Universe even our relatively close neighbors.
There are multiple clear river like features on Pluto -- what could be creating the heat to form liquid flows?
Gravity tries to pull mass inward. My understanding is large amounts of gas in space eventually clump together. If their mass reaches a certain limit, nuclear reactions can form and give birth to a star. If they're not massive enough then they become a brown dwarf which is a star that failed to get nuclear fusion inside it's center. When a star is born, it's a very violent procedure. Lots of debris is flung out in the form of a protoplanetary disk. This debris is what forms our planets since some of that debris clumps together and takes shape. The circular shape of planets has to do with reaching a certain mass where gravity wants to clump it all it all together. When it does that, it takes a spherical shape. Most of the heavy elements that make up Earth for example are actually from much more massive stars than our Sun. When nuclear fusion is no longer able to sustain against the force of gravitational collapse, then a supernova occurs. Depending on what type of supernova it is, a single star's death can actually have more luminosity than it's entire host galaxy. It's actually the study of Type 1A supernova, which occur from binary star systems that gave evidence that the universe is not only expanding but is also accelerating faster and faster as it expands. The sun when it will die, will become a dwarf star. It's theorized that Type 1A supernova occur when a dwarf star begins to take matter from it's binary counterpart and forms an accretion disk. Eventually when the dwarf star absorbs enough of it's binary counterpart, it will explode in one of the most violent ways known in the universe and become a supernova. Since these explosions are temporarily brighter than their entire host galaxy, astronomers use them as measuring tools to determine exactly how far away a galaxy is from us, kinda like driving down a freeway and being able to tell how far away a car is from it's headlights. When they studied light emitted from galaxies about half way in distance from us, they noticed that the light waves bands were stretched and became red shifted. In contrast, galaxies that are closer to us, become blue shifted since they're being drawn in by the force of gravity. Supernova are especially interesting because it's from these massive stars that we get the heavier elements in the periodic table. The center of massive stars contain these heavier elements. So when these huge stars die and become supernova, they eject these heavier elements into space. Smaller stars like the sun who happen to be in the neighborhood of a supernova can collect these heavier elements in their formation. Some of that is ejected into the protoplanetary disk. Some of those heavier elements become little bitty chunks of a whole planet. The reason heavier elements are generally found closer to the earth's center than our surface is again because of gravity. One of the leading theories regarding our earth's formation is that it's center was extremely hot and liquid. So hot that these heavier elements did not become solid. In turn those heavier elements could then be pulled down inward because of gravity until the earth cooled down enough for those elements to take a solid mass. I probably gave you more information than you wanted to know. If I'm wrong on anything, please feel free to correct me. Hope this helps.
