New Pluto Moon Adds Another Chapter to Dwarf Planet's Saga | Pluto & Its Moons | NASA & New Horizons Mission
Artist’s impression of how the surface of Pluto might look. The image shows patches of pure methane on the surface.
CREDIT: ESO/L. Calçada
The discovery of a fourth moon around Pluto — which astronomers announced Wednesday (July 20) — is just the latest twist in the dwarf planet's convoluted story, one that's packed full of surprises and drama.
Pluto was once thought to be as big as the Earth. It was regarded as a full-fledged planet for three-quarters of a century, only to be demoted to a new category, "dwarf planet," in 2006. Pluto was not known to have any moons until 1978, and now scientists have found four satellites around the frigid, distant body — more than circle Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury combined.
In short, scientists' understanding of Pluto, while improving, has always been fuzzy. And the picture likely won't really begin coming clear until NASA's New Horizons spacecraft makes the first-ever close flyby of the dwarf planet in July 2015. [...]
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You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
My personal theory is that from time to time the precipitates that trigger magnetic anomalies in the surface of the Sun coagulate into bundles which are then ejected during a coronal event. Upon ejection they're so hot as to be collapsed into fairly small packages, with surfaces covered in volcanoes and any atmosphere they'd produce being immediately dispersed by the solar wind. Crusts form, collide, and melt on the surface and the core boils, and the heavier gasses being released begin to collect at the surface. Time passes (geologic time), orbits decay, and lighter gasses collect as the solar wind becomes less urgent. About this time, if the initial composition was agreeable (and the elements would tend to be common in each body expelled by any given star), that planet would be of an age and level of maturity to support what we consider to be life. Time continues to pass, eventually the planet reaches a point of stasis in which the activity within and without the planet are about equal. The atmosphere thins as internal activity decreases and fewer gasses or liquids are produced. Eventually even the thinnest gasses begin to collect again as the planet's internal reactions continue at a moderate pace but the solar wind is gentle enough to stop blowing it away. Rings gather at the equators as the planet's wobble has settled and it's disturbance of the solar wind is less pronounced. As the planet's internal activity settles, it's metabolism so to speak, it puts out fewer gasses and what's left is the inert shell of it's former body, bundles of elements that will eventually either be consumed by the growth of the Sun or fall back into it's body to begin again (or collide with something on the way). Along the way the planet's likely to have collected a, or a few, accompanying bodies, bits that were spit out or falling back, that may or may not have ever been full-fledged planets in their own right (or may still be even in their role as satellites). So to me it makes sense that Pluto would have remnants of an atmosphere and a few 'friends' in it's entourage. It may have a breath or two left in it, but it's already roaming the graveyard.
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