To Pluto and Beyond

What have we learned from the New Horizons spacecraft so far? How has Pluto surprised us? And what's next?

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcomed up Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says ice and
silence and dark skies as we go around another year.

(00:21):
I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Bolcabon, I'm Joe McCormick. That
kind of put me in a in a moody mood,
melancholy mood. That song I don't normally talk about the
lyrics I pick, but this, in this case I'm going to.
That song is called I'm Your Moon. It's by Jonathan Colton,
and it's about Pluto and Karen, and it's it's Karen
singing to Pluto after Pluto has been downgraded from planet

(00:44):
to dwarf planet, saying it's all right, I'm still here
with you and we're revolving around each other. You know,
that's the thing. When people get upset about Pluto not
being a planet anymore, I'm like, what's wrong with being
a dwarf planet. It's kind of insulting to Series and
all these other dwarf planet that are pretty cool. Well,
I think Colton's point was that the designation was almost

(01:04):
created for Pluto and Thereford, that's when it's an insult.
We're not calling you that anymore. We're calling you this
new thing that you are, and and nothing else that
we've classified yet is but the reason why we chose
that lyric, or why I chose that lyric in the
first place. Yeah, act like we have any say whenever
I'm not hear you guys, pay lyrics. Um. But no,

(01:26):
we we are going to cover new horizons the probe
that has gone on this amazing mission to Pluto, the
flyby of Pluto, and to talk about everything that went
into making that mission possible, as well as the some
of the science that we've learned so far, knowing that
we've got so much more to learn from this mission,

(01:49):
and it's really just a cool story. It's amazing that
I grew up learning about Pluto as one of the
planets in our Solar system in my science books, and
I remember, you know, learning all the names of the
planets and thinking about Pluto is just another one of them.
But I think I didn't realize when I was a
kid how we had never gotten a close look at Pluto.

(02:13):
Oh yeah, yeah, And I mean depending on when you
were learning about it. I don't think that we had
any concept about even what the atmosphere of the planet
looked like until yea, So when I was a kid
going to school, we didn't know anything about Pluto's atmosphere. Yeah,
they were there. They were just making it up. They
were just like, hey, so there's this planet called Pluto
out there. Yeah it's and you know it's it's it's

(02:36):
probably I see, pretty young in our our scientific knowledge,
Like if you look at that, you know when we
learned of these different planets. The discovery of Pluto dates
back to nineteen thirty who discovered by Clyde Townbo who
named you know, was able to discover this planet, which
got him a great deal of fame in astronaut Uncle Circles,

(03:00):
who was Clyde uh clients. It was an interesting guy,
very eccentric, astronomer, very he loved puns. So I think
I would have gotten along with Clyde really well a
guy non eccentric astronomers. Is that a subcategory of the field.
There could be some who are just very you know,

(03:21):
very middle of the road kind of astronomers. I don't know.
I think of astronomers as being dreamers, so I often
think of them as being eccentric. I'm sure you have
your astronomical accountants, the people who their favorite part of
the job is logging the coordinance of the new object,
creating new spreadsheet mechanisms to to sort the data, naming
those objects on nonsequential series of like the CR one

(03:47):
oh five nine point a R four so droll so
uh tumbo discovered Pluto, but later on we would discover
much more about this that it has five moons that
we know of. There may be more, the largest of
which is Karen, which is more than half the size
of Pluto if you're going by diameter. There's also sticks, Nicks, cabarros,

(04:13):
and Hydra. We've got a lot of Hellish names going
on here. The idea being that when you come out
from interstellar space and you start entering into the Solar System,
you first passed through the Alter realm, the hellish Alter
got to go through Hell to get to us kind
of or you know, it's the icy mouth of Satan

(04:33):
out there. To be fair, the the idea of the
underworld and the and the the area beyond life in
Greek mythology doesn't have quite the same connotations, not necessarily
a place of punishment for it, but we do get
these like sort of like negative afterlife kind of feelings.

(04:55):
Which Pluto, he's the god of the dead, right and
and you know if a lot of very popular depictions
of that character cast that cast him in a villainous
or or malevolent light. Yeah, was he in the Disney Hercules.
Was the Hades with the fire hair? Yeah, played by
James Would Yeah, thank you, but definitely the equivalent to Pluto. Yes, okay,

(05:20):
so you got Pluto, you got you got sticks. That's
the river you have to cross to get to the underworld.
Also an amazing arena band. Right there you go. And
then Karen is the fairy operator who gets you across
the right. Yeah, who you? You have the coins that
you have to have so that he will fare you across. Now,
I don't know quite about the other ones. Care bros.

(05:41):
That's uh, I don't know, okay, Well, hydra Hydra's the
multi headed Oh yeah, yeah, I know that one, all right,
you know that one? Hale hydra ra Uh, you know,
I don't know what you guys are talking. Cares that's
the Greek pronunciation for We often will get a soft
Sea Serberus, the three headed dog. Okay, so um, yeah,

(06:06):
it's uh. And by the way, I have a friend
from high school who is uh, very knowledgeable in Greek mythology,
and if he's listening to this episode, I do apologize
for butchering the pronunciation of all these names, because I
know I am, But these were discovered later on, and
this was really the New Horizons mission was our really

(06:27):
our first chance to get a close look at these
various bodies. Before we had had a lot of pretty
blurry images from various telescopes. Oh yeah, if you googled
images of Pluto just a couple of months ago, you
would get artists illustrations, but then you'd also get a
photograph from the Hubble telescope that was basically a disc

(06:48):
of yellow and black blurs. Yeah, it's it's funny because
NASA has actually released a series of photos that have
been taken over time of Pluto, so you can actually
see our view of Pluto. Yeah, it's really impressive. But
before we get into the actual mission, I thought i'd

(07:09):
talk a little bit just kind of a quick overview
of the history of planetary exploration using probes, because it
kind of tells you, you know, how how difficult this
problem was and why it's been so why it took
so long for us to get a close look at Pluto. Yeah.
Also just to put in real quick, because we forgot

(07:29):
one of these moons. Nicks is the goddess of the night.
I didn't mention Nick, thank you very much. Similar I
think they're related. So I think it's one of those
weird Zeus things and Nicks. It's awesome. I just wanted
to put in, don't don't want to forget anybody out there.
I just like that. We've got a real rock in
episode so far. Alright, So alright, No, I'm not going

(07:57):
to go down that route. So the first successful UH mission,
a fly by mission using a probe would be back
in nineteen sixty two with the Mariner Too. That went
by Venus because the first time we sent a probe
on a fly by mission of another planet, and it
was the first mission to perform a successful fly by.

(08:17):
But it wasn't our first try as a as a
you know, as humanity's first try wasn't the first one.
The first try was with the Soviet Union in nineteen
sixty one with the Sputnik seven probe that was meant
to land on Venus, but it never escaped Earth orbits.
So yeah, well, and this story happens over and over

(08:37):
for both the Soviets and for the United States. I mean,
this was this was during the Space race, right, No,
I'm not making fun. Yeah, sad trombone noises that would
go along with the rest of this this section here. Yeah,
And and other attempts that would follow spot Nick seven
but we're also unsuccessful, were the Venera one and the
Mariner one and the spot Nick nineteen pro uh. And

(09:01):
it wouldn't be until Mariner two that we actually got
a good look at Venus. Next came Mars actually, so
we didn't go to Mercury. Next, we went to Mars.
And that was the Mariner four as the first successful
fly by probe. That was in nineteen sixty four, and
I believe it was on July four of nineteen sixty four,
which happens to be the same date that we achieved

(09:22):
this Pluto fly by. Cool, that's an interesting coincidence. Other
attempts to get to Mars included Mariner three, spot Next
twenty two and twenty four, and the Mars one and
Mars Nick one and two probes. Actually those two had
been launched back in nineteen sixty, so if Mars Nick
one and two had been successful, they would have actually
preceded the Venus fly by, but they were not successful.

(09:46):
Then we checked out Mercury in nineteen seventy three with
the Mariner four. Voyager one and two flew by Jupiter
and Saturn. In nineteen seventy seven, Voyager two would also
go by Uranus and Neptune. So we had looks at
all the other planets, but Pluto remained so far out there, uh,

(10:06):
that we had not had a chance to check it out.
And so we launched the New Horizons probe way back
in two thousand six. So it took more than eight
years for it to go from Earth to Pluto. Uh.
And it's funny because it almost didn't happen. We almost
didn't have a New Horizons project, and if it had

(10:28):
not happened when it did, we would have had a
really long wait ahead of us to give it another go.
So NASA had been debating on a Pluto mission for decades,
and one of the proposed missions was called the Pluto
Kuiper Express. Back in two thousand Kuiper referring to the
Kuiper Belt, which is sort of like the asteroid belt

(10:48):
between Mars and Jupiter, but much bigger and on the
very outskirts of our solar systems, way way out there. Yeah,
lots of frozen not just water, ice, but methane and
other hydrocarb and uh So, the budget for this proposed
mission just kept growing as time went on. Things were
getting tagged on. This was during a pretty rough period

(11:10):
during NASA's history. Yeah, this was during a lot of
the Space Shuttle trouble and stuff like that. Yeah, and
budget cuts they were they were facing big budget cuts,
and there were budget plans that were proposed that didn't
have money set aside specifically for missions like this, which
also caused a problem. But eventually NASA ended up canceling
this project when it just got too complicated and too expensive,

(11:32):
and that prompted the NASA Associate Administrator Ed Wiler to
say that the plans to visit Pluto were officially dead
for the foreseeable future. And here is why. So, Pluto's
got a really enormous orbit, right gigantic, Yeah, and not
exactly as close to circular as many of the other orbits, right, Yeah,

(11:56):
it kind of dips in and out. Yeah, it's kind
of what we might call an ex and trick orbit.
And if NASA didn't get a spacecraft on the way
to Pluto within a few years of two thousand, while
it was as most interesting, we would miss that opportunity.
Well most interesting. Aren't planets always kind of interesting? Well,
they're always kind of interesting, but some can be more

(12:19):
interesting than others, and some can be more interesting at
one time of the year than another. For example, when
Pluto is closer to the Sun, its atmosphere is gaseous,
or so we suspected, So we suspected. But when it
moves further out, scientists were worried that the temperature of
the planet would become so cold that the atmosphere itself

(12:40):
would freeze and fall to the ground. So you imagine,
like if you've ever seen any of those cartoons or
anything where someone says something and their words freeze in
the air, and then it's kind of like that, but
for real, z's that. I feel like I have felt
cold before. I don't think I think I need to redefine. Yeah,

(13:02):
you know, we're talking like, you know, seriously cold here
where where things that would be in gas form here
on Earth would be would be solid there on Pluto.
So we wanted to be able to look at Pluto
when it's atmosphere would still be an atmospheric form, but
because of that enormous orbit, we would only have a
certain operation, a certain window of opportunity. Um Pluto takes

(13:28):
two hundred forty seven point six eight earth years to
go around the Sun once, and if we missed that
point where that that range where the atmosphere would remain
in gas form as far as we could tell, then
we'd have more than two centuries to wait to try
it again. And that that's that's that's a really long

(13:50):
term budget plan, even for NASA exactly right, And then
they'd be like, well, why bother planning anything, because by
the time we'd get around to launch all, all the
technology is going to be different anyway. So it was
very disheartening to those who wanted to look at Pluto
back in two thousand when this mission was canceled. So

(14:12):
in order to get to Pluto in time to check
out this atmosphere, they had one other chance, which was
to use one of the other planets in our Solar
system as kind of a boost. Right, This is the
Jupiter Gravity Assist, and New Horizons is not the only
spacecraft that has used this. We We've talked about this
a bunch on the show. It's it's basically, when you

(14:35):
get a probe or or spacecraft near the orbit of
something big enough to kind of uh, let it be
captured by the planet and then keep going. So so
it like it like gets this forward boost by by
temporarily kind of kind of riding in the slip stream
of the planet almost and then like like that skateboard

(14:56):
and back to the future. That's exactly what I was
gonna say. It's like when Marty gets on the back
of the truck and uses the truck to accelerate on
the skateboard much faster than his little toe push could
ever get him. Right. Yeah, So the the you might think, well,
if we have Jupiter there, then what's the big worry?
We can just use jubiter Well, Jupiter orbits too. Yeah,

(15:17):
And and Jupiter's orbit and Pluto's orbit, aren't you know,
it's not like they're always in alignment, so you only
have the amount of time where you can still correct
for the trajectory you're going to get with the gravity
assist so that you're still heading in the right direction
so that you ultimately pass by Pluto. Uh. And the
scientists had figured out that they needed to have this

(15:41):
uh they need to have a launch before really January
two thousand six or right around there in order to
take advantage of this. Now it turns out that they
actually got there a little later than that because the
calculations weren't uh like like they they had kind of
been conservative by saying, if we don't get there by
January two thou six, we don't get there at all,

(16:03):
or if we don't launch by January two thousand six,
there's no point in doing it. But uh, the point
was that they needed to launch from Earth because it
was going to take time to go from Earth to
Jupiter and then even more time obviously to go from
Jupiter to Pluto. So they used this new idea. They
kind of started pitching this around and there was a
new group formed in NASA to design a mission that

(16:24):
would become New Horizons, and they estimated the cost would
be five hundred million dollars, which would include the rocket
needed to launch the spacecraft, so not just that the
spacecraft cost five million, they're saying the whole thing. Yeah,
considering how we taught so many times about how expensive
getting stuff into spaces, Uh, it's actually pretty pretty uh decent,

(16:45):
you know, as far as space missions are concerned. Um.
So they proposed this in two thousand one. There was
a competitive mission pitch process where NASA was entertaining mission
pitches from various parts of the organization, and as administration said,
all right, let's fund this one. Let's see if we
can make it happen. Uh. So the funding came from

(17:08):
earmarks and budgets placed by members of Congress because the
president his budget plan did not cover anything that would
go to this kind of mission. So, in other words,
it took an Act of Congress in order to carve
out parts of NASA's budget to allow this to happen.
So New Horizons gets the funding it needs from this

(17:28):
Act of Congress. But there still were some other issues
before it got to the point where I was doing
a fly by of Pluto. Well, yeah, I know, it's
had some onboard computer problems. Yeah, Um, just after the
gravitational assist from Jupiter, it had a computer issue that
wasn't even the one I was talking about you were
thinking of the one that was almost that was just
before It's fly by. No, they had so cosmic race.

(17:51):
We've talked about these before on the podcast. Sure, high
energy particles flying through space. Uh, so they can cause
computer glitches since see it ends up being like a
control all delete thing. It's not like it's it destroys
the computer, but it doesn't necessitate a reboot. Um. So,
there were cosmic rays that interfered with the computer, and

(18:12):
at first the team had anticipated that it would only
happen once in New Horizons mission. They thought that the
cosmic rays were infrequent enough and the space is huge
that the odds were that New Horizons might encounter one.
They get, they kind of factored that in. It turned
out that it encountered several more on its way to Pluto,

(18:32):
and it was fine, it would reboot, everything was okay,
So no permanent damage was caused, but it did teach
scientists something interesting like, Wow, there's a little bit more
of a chance of running into cosmic radiation than we
had first anticipated. Yeah, what more of that activity? Uh?
And that can control delete kind of thing was also
what wound up happening in the more recent computer shutdown. Yes,

(18:55):
that was very scary because we were right about to
reach Pluto. Yeah, we were like ten days out. Yes, Specifically,
what was happening was that the computer aboard the New
Horizons was being asked to do two things at once,
and it was the combination of the two what gave
it Cartesian doubt. It had too much, It required too
much computational power. It could not do both of them

(19:15):
at once. So instead of trying to do both of
them ones and possibly damaging itself in the process, it
shut down, went to its backup computer, and so for
a while we found home. Found home to say like, hey,
hell yeah, exactly what to do about this one? My
main brain shut down? Can you guys look into that?
And so you know, obviously it takes a long time

(19:37):
for information to get between the spacecraft and us. Yeah,
for four and a half hours was the time difference
at like like right then on that day. So that's
you know, a significant delay between getting a message out
and being able to reply. Then you have to wait
another four and a half hours for the reply to
go out, and then you have to wait another four

(19:58):
and a half hours to see if it worked. But
everything worked out fine. The engineers on the ground said,
you know, this is exactly what the computer was supposed
to do. If this sort of thing happened, we know
how to fix it. Uh. There were some reports that
would say in the media that made it seem like
the mission itself was in jeopardy. But all the engineers
I was reading about, they were like, no, I mean
this was you know it. It obviously caused concern because

(20:21):
of the timing. Oh yeah, yeah. But and and for
that minute when you know, they got the like help
message at first, you know, before they could check back
in with the computer, there was that moment of them
going like, oh, well, is this another computer shutdown or
did an asteroid destroy our spacecraft? And no one had
any idea for like another four and a half to

(20:43):
nine hours. There was always the chance that there could
be a collision, and that would have been the end
of New Horizons. Yeah. Of the four d and nineties
six planned observations, the shut down prevented thirty of them
from happening. Uh so so six percent, which which sounds
like a kind of large number until you kind of wait,

(21:03):
the importance of the observations by how close you actually
are to the planet, and this was still so far out,
or relatively so far out, that it didn't do any
uh irreparable harm that there were most of the stuff
I saw was like, it caused thirty of our observations
to not happen, but they were thirty of the boring ones. Yeah,

(21:28):
I mean I hadn't crossed over into the underworld yet. No. No,
it caused a few of our staff members to sleep
on the floor of the apl that night. But so
I thought we could talk a little bit about some
of the instruments that are on the new horizons. These
are the things that are gathering the information, and they
were purposefully made fairly simple. They decided not to go

(21:51):
super elaborate and and load this thing down with you know,
a hundred instruments. There are only seven aboard the spacecraft
UM and they have great names. Are they also named
after demonic entities from the underworld? Yes, Ralph, demonic entity
from the underworld, is the first one quake in fear
upon the approach of Ralph. Ralph maybe what you do

(22:14):
in the underworld, if you're at a certain level of
the world that I recall lots of Ralph ing in
one of the levels of Dante's inferno. Uh No RALPH
is a visible and infrared imager and spectrometer, and it
is able to create thermal maps of surfaces and provide
color and composition. Uh you know enhancements to images. So

(22:35):
a lot of the pictures that we see, by the
time we see them, they've gone through a couple of
different layers of enhancements so that we can really make
sense of what we're seeing. It's not the what the
raw data would normally represent. Then you have ALICE, which
is an ultraviolet imaging spectrometer, and that's used to examine
the composition of Pluto's atmosphere and can also search for

(22:57):
an atmosphere around other bodies like Karen Kuiper Belt objects
or k b o s. Then you have REX, the
Radio Science Experiment. So why isn't it our sex Now
I know it's so Radio Science Experiment or REX, which
measures atmospheric composition and temperature. It's a radiometer. Then you

(23:20):
have LORI l O r r I, the Long Range
Reconnaissance Imager, which is a camera with a really amazing
telescopic lens um and that is what has been used
to take pictures of Pluto's far side, the side that's
facing away from us, and it also provides high res images.
Then you have SWAP the solar wind around Pluto. It's

(23:42):
a spectrometer that analyzes solar wind and plasma and it
can also measure the escape rate of Pluto's atmosphere. We'll
talk a little bit about Pluto's atmosphere in the second
because that's really cool. Uh, pepsi, you can't do that,
but pepsi. Yeah, no trademark. So Pluta after the ancient

(24:03):
Scandinavian goddess of refreshing beverage carbonation out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Yeah, again,
no Pluto. Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation. That's what stands for.
It's an energetic particle spectrometer which measures the composition and
density of plasma escaping Pluto's atmosphere. So similar to SWAP

(24:25):
in that way. And then you have the s d C.
The Student dust counter doesn't count student dust. Uh, it's
that was designed by students to kill. Yeah, so students
designed this instrument and it measures the space dust that
new horizons encounters throughout its voyage. So kind of cool
and uh, so far it's found tons of science. Ye,

(24:50):
surprising things too, things we didn't expect to find. Yeah. Absolutely.
The surface color data that we've started getting back indicates
that there are three zones on Pluto, a kind of
kind of arc zone around the equator, then then mid
colored zones around the mid latitudes, and uh, I see
looking zones in the polar regions, which the New Horizons

(25:10):
team is is guessing is the result of seasonal ice
transport from the equator to the poles. By ice transport,
we don't necessarily mean like trucks taking ice. Well, you know,
I'm not I'm not counting anything out. Yes, you're here.
You know. I've seen a lot of talk about the
methane forming glaciers and glacial activity. Yeah, the the methane

(25:33):
and nitrogen and carbon monoxide are forming glaciers because it
is like negative degrees fahrenheit. Very jilly out there. Yeah,
super interesting. Also, there's that heart of Pluto regiat. Yeah,
so that's one of the big surface features everybody's been
noticing and right and drawing cartoons about. Yeah. Yeah, this
is the vaguely heart shaped I've also seen several memes

(25:56):
of the image of Pluto. The cartoon dog superimposed on
top of this particular region, because because from one angle
it looks like a you're looking at Pluto in profile. Yeah,
there's also the Pluto surface whale. I've also seen. It
suggested that since there is you know, no correct way
up in space that that we are looking at, that

(26:17):
took us of Pluto, oddly enough, not the dark side
of Pluto. This lighter colored region appears to be a
concentration of carbon monoxide ice but yeah, and intensifies towards
the center of that frozen area. So the concentration of
carbon monoxide grows as you get towards the center of
this mass. But of course, the most scientifically remarkable thing

(26:41):
about it is not that it is heart shaped, but
that it is so smooth. I mean, isn't it. Yeah. Yeah.
One of the odd things is that you would expect
there to be a lot more invitations and craters exactly
because you would expect, you know, Pluto was actually kind
of blasted by other materials, but so we expected to

(27:05):
see lots of pits and craters on the surface like
you do in the moon. And when you don't see that,
then you start have to ask yourself why isn't it
like that, then what is going on? That means that
why don't we have these craters and pits? Right, So
it's typically been suggested, well, if we're looking at a
smooth region on Pluto, that must mean that this region,

(27:27):
for some reason, is geologically younger than we would expect
any part of the surface of Pluto to be. Yeah.
In fact, the estimations are that the surface has been
geologically active within the last one hundred million years. There's
nothing on a geological scale for a plan it's been
around for four billion years. In fact, I saw a

(27:48):
report from Science magazine that said that the New Horizons
team member John Spencer suggested it might even still be
active today, which is pretty interesting that. That's also where
I think I've seen some of them mentioned about glacial activity. Uh.
And so we've got this one region that's informally called
the Tombo Region. Within that Tambo region, there is a

(28:12):
specific area of of ancient crater terrain where some of
the craters have been filled in by very much younger ice.
And they're calling this the Cthulhu Reggio because they hate
us and our ability to sleep. Yeah, yeah, fathogen uh yeah,
And so much, so, so much stuff about this is

(28:37):
surprising to us. Getting back into the glaciers that we
talked about, we mentioned that before, with the carbon monoxide ice,
the nitrogen ice, the methane ice. Uh, that's amazing, and
that we don't we don't really understand how all of
these different land masses came about, right, you know they
that's a large mystery to us too. So there are

(29:00):
a couple of different hypotheses that we have about the
various cracks and troughs that are on the surface of
Pluto and how they might have formed. One is that
maybe it was through contraction of the surface, which is
like when you have a muddy area and then the
sun comes out and it dries. You see those cracks
form as the as the mud solidifies into dirt. Sure, okay,

(29:21):
So so maybe the orbit of Pluto taking it back
into the closer to the sun and letting some of
these carbon monoxide glaciers melt. Possibly. Uh. The other possible
on another hypothesis is convection, in which Pluto's interior would
warm the frozen carbon monoxide. Uh. But that that of

(29:42):
course raises questions all on its own, right, like how
would that happen. One of the big lingering questions that's
left by the new discoveries about Pluto is if we
assume that these surface features are explained by heat coming
from the interior of Pluto, so geologic act ativity, uh,
convection warming coming from the center of planet. Where does

(30:04):
that heat come from? Because we wouldn't expect it to
be there. I think it's love. Uh yeah, these are
these are the This is why the scientists absolutely have
been bubbling over with excitement, because it's when you discover
stuff and you don't know the answer to the question
that really gets people like their imagination going, and they

(30:26):
have to start coming up with ideas and then finding
ways they might be able to test that. Yeah. So
I've read a few just proposed hypotheses. I mean, nobody
knows the answer yet. But one of the ideas is
that Pluto and its moon Karen were actually formed at
a much more recent impact event than was previously thought.
You know, the ideas that they formed a long time

(30:47):
ago when things were smashing together in the early Solar System.
You could explain them having more heat inside if they
had formed much more recently than we expected. Another explanation
would be if they are compounds present on Pluto and
Karen with lower melting points than we would expect, or
you could maybe explain it in terms of tidal forces.

(31:08):
But I think it's cool that we don't know the
answer to this yet. Yeah, No, that's it's it's great
in the sense that it gives us goals, right like,
now we know these observations, Now we have to explain
what caused the stuff we observed. So pretty awesome. Uh,
there are other some some other features on Pluto that
we should talk about. There's some dark streaks across the

(31:31):
plains of Pluto that suggests that wind could have been
blowing material across the frozen service. Also, the mountains on
Pluto seem to be about a hundred million years old
or younger, similar to some of the other features we
were talking about mountain building again as evidence of geologic activity. Yeah,
and because of that lack of craters again, that tells us,

(31:54):
you know, generally, how old they must be, because if
they were older, we would expect to see a lot
more craters on them. Um. And normally we would say
that a planet's a planet's mountains would be formed by
some gravitational interaction between other plants that would generate the
heat that would lead to major geological activity. But we

(32:15):
have to kind of discount that for Pluto. It's too
far out there for the that to be a factor.
So it's not like the thing. The forces that we
understand that act upon other bodies don't necessarily pertain to Pluto.
It's too small and too far away for that gravitational
interaction to generate the heat necessary at least as far

(32:36):
as we understand. And maybe that there's something going on
that we had not factored in, and then we have
to revise our ideas of what is possible, which is
also super exciting. Then we can talk about Pluto's atmosphere,
the which was largely a mystery to us. You know,
this was the whole reason why we wanted to go
when we went, because we wanted to make sure we
could observe it while it was still an atmosphere form

(32:56):
and not just chunks of ice on the ground. Um So,
Pluto's atmosphere has been observed as far out as one
thousand miles or six hundred kilometers from its surface, which
was much further out than previous observations which were around
a hundred seventy miles or two seventy kilometers, and it
also contains a haze. There's this there's this great image
of Pluto from the far side of Pluto where new

(33:20):
Horizons has already gone past the planet, taking pictures back
from the way it came right right with sunlight kind
of filtering through. Yeah, the atmosphere. It looks like it's
the actually filtering. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was gonna say
it looks like the cover of the ring from the
well where you get that ring of light. But yeah,
it's this haze that's around the planet. And and that

(33:42):
haze is really interesting, and it's actually a couple of
different complex hydrocarbons like ethylene and acetylene, and those are
byproducts that's what remains from methane after it's been broken
down by a ultraviolet light. So so in the upper
atmosphere of Pluto, you've got the solar radiation interacting the
atmosphere and smashing up those methane molecules and and kind

(34:04):
of dribbling this beautiful haze down onto the surface. Exactly.
It falls through the atmosphere of Pluto and condenses on
the way down, and that's where we're getting this this haze.
I think I read that's where Pluto's red color comes from,
isn't it. Yeah, it turns into this reddish brown goop.
And so being a scientific term, yes, goop goo, whatever

(34:25):
you want, gunk. I mean, there are a lot of
different words I could use, um, But at any rate,
the hypothesis is, in fact, this is what gives Pluto
that color. It may just be a one contributing factor
to that. Actually, you know, we can't can't definitively say
that that's the main reason or the only reason for
the reddish coloration, but it seems to be contributing to it. Uh.

(34:48):
And then scientists have been observing some fluctuations in Pluto's
atmosphere that changes in the atmospheric pressure. Actually, there were
earlier observations that were made where the pressure was at
one level, but as new horizons went by, it was
much much less. And scientists believe that in fact, we

(35:09):
are observing Pluto while it's undergoing a global change in atmosphere. Yeah. Yeah,
The atmospheric pressure on the surface of Pluto right now
is just one one of Earth's surface pressure. And they
measured this by sending radio waves to Pluto as as
the probe was passing directly behind it and therefore measuring

(35:32):
the distortion of those radio waves through the atmosphere, along
getting those really beautiful pictures of the sun filtering through.
So super interesting, like it may be that this was
just incredibly fortuitous that we are actually looking at this
planet in a moment of transformation, and who knows what
if this had not worked out and we had not

(35:52):
been able to send the probe at this time and
we had to wait another couple of centuries, the people
that then would look at Pluto would see something fundamentally
different and not necessarily even know that it's a different,
different condition than what we would have observed, if you know,
with new horizons, which is kind of kind of mind

(36:13):
blowing really because this is stuff that happens over millennia,
so so to see something in that much flux is
pretty phenomenal. Yeah, of course, lucky for us. One of
the coolest features of Pluto that we've observed so far
is the direct evidence of the erosion of Pluto's atmosphere.

(36:34):
So Pluto has a tail, which anyone who knows Disney
is not surprised by. Uh, it's on every single one
of the cartoons. Go pun yourself until you're ashamed. So Pluto,
Pluto does have an atmospheric tail, so that the soft
the solar wind that that radiation, uh, it impacts the atmosphere.

(36:55):
Pluto does not have super strong gravity. That atmosphere is
getting stripped away and uh on the back side of
the planet. You can sort of think of it. Imagine
that you've got water that's hitting a round rock and
you'd see the water kind of move around that rock
and then rejoin on the other side. That rejoining part.
Think of that as like the tail that's being pulled

(37:17):
away from Pluto. That's where the solar wind has gone
around Pluto and and started to strip this atmosphere away. Uh.
That's why you have the various instruments aboard the new
horizons to look for plasma and you know, indications of
solar wind and also measure this this rate of the
atmosphere being stripped from the planet. And it's pretty interesting. Um. Also,

(37:43):
we're seeing some new pictures of Karen Nix and Hydra.
The photo of Nicks shows like if you see the
pictures of it, it's kind of this weird pink kind
of like a j yeah, jelly beanish, Yeah, reddish, pinkish,
kind of hue. Uh. But NASA does point out the
color of those photos has been enhanced, and NIX looks
exactly like it came out of the sequence where the

(38:06):
Millennium falcon is going through the asteroid belt in the
Empire Um. It looks like an asteroid from Star Wars,
and Hydra itself may actually be covered in water ice,
which is kind of exciting. Yeah, and yeah, we still
have lots of things to to ask ourselves, like where
is the heat coming from on Pluto? Yeah, I don't know.

(38:29):
It's kind of cool. Yeah. In addition to the other
hypotheses I mentioned earlier, I was again reading about this
in this science magazine. So radioactive elements inside planets can
of course explain heat coming up geologically, but that's thought
not to be the case for Pluto and especially Karen,

(38:49):
just because they're so small that they would have radioactive
it did out already, if that's how you, Yeah, I
had it all, I guess. So essentially their batteries would
be drained by this point. Yeah, right, So of course
it turns out that they're much younger than we we
originally thought maybe that's the explanation. Yeah, it could be

(39:12):
that's why we're looking so yeah, really interesting there. Um.
One other thing to mention is the fact that we
don't have all the information because New Horizons is still
sending it to us. Yeah, and there's really quite a
lot of it. We're going to spend the next several months,
I think, receiving nitty gritty little bits of geological data.

(39:34):
They kind of sent all of the big interest interesting
photos out first to be like, hey, look at the
shiny thing and be excited about it. And then it's
going to be plodding through logs and logs and logs
of data for a while, and it's not getting to
us quickly for two very good reasons. So first of all,

(39:55):
we probably won't be seeing the last of the Pluto
data until maybe Scember. That'll be when we by then
we should have received the last of it. Man speed
of light, so slow at speed of light. And it's
also the fact that they're using the equivalent of like
a bond modem on the New Horizons, which is actually true.
They they are, um, they're using a transmitter that has

(40:18):
a throughput up between six hundred to twelve hundred bits
per second. So if you're sending something of significant size,
it's gonna take some time to get to Earth. Not
just because of the distances involved, because yes, as we've
said said, even light's going to be traveling, uh, you know,
at a top speed where it's going to take hours

(40:41):
to get back to Earth, but also because of the throughput.
If a file is of a significant size, then you know,
four and a half hours after it's been sent from
the the probe, we start getting the first bits and
then we have to wait several hours for it to complete. Uh,
So this whole process is going to take quite some time.

(41:04):
And uh, the the probe itself has a couple of
different recorders on its solid state recorders, each of which
has eight gigabytes of storage space available. And that might
not sound like like a lot of of data. Eight
eight gigs, you know, and these are modern times of
having cell phones with a terabyte on them or whatever
it is that people are walking around with these days.
But but in terms of space exploration, it's it's really

(41:26):
quite a lot, right, And when you factor in that
you're only able to send it at six hundred to
bits per second, that takes a very long time to
send that much information, assuming that you've even filled up
the drive. You may not have, but still it's going
to take a long time. I mean that might not
sink in because you might not even interact with the

(41:47):
measure bit in your day to day life. Like a bit.
What is a bit? Jonathan? Uh So, a bit is
one eighth of a byte, and then so a gigabyte
is a bill billion bites? Uh so eight billion bits?
Um Well, roughly speaking, because if we want to be
really really specific, then you have to start going like, oh, well,

(42:10):
I kill a bite is actually one four But it
doesn't We're not going to get into those those little
tiny details. But yeah, generally speaking, you know, if you're
talking about six bits per second, getting through a gigabytes
gonna take you quite some time. Yeah. It just makes
me think back to my early days of using a
dial up modem and connecting to bulletin board systems. Um.

(42:33):
I think it's said something along the lines that it
would take you several hours to download a standard picture.
Like uh like, if you were using your phone with
the same sort of data throughput and you wanted to
access a picture, you would start and then maybe like
two hours later you might have a picture to look at.
I remember doing that in like start a middle school. Yeah, okay,

(42:55):
fine for Biddle school for you, Yeah okay, yeah, no,
I remember when I was in like elementary school, right,
elementary school, fantastic. You try to download a picture, might
take an hour, but you know, then you'd print it
on your printer and on your wall. My favorite was
when you would start downloading a picture and someone would

(43:16):
pick up the phone line and yeah, I needed this
picture of Judas Priest that I'm not even going to
be able to find that sailor Moon comic again. So
the the other things we might learn due to the
new horizons traveling around will be more information about some

(43:37):
of the other moons of Pluto, as well as Kuiper
Belt objects. They're supposed to. They're going to try and
have the probe fly by some Kuiper Belt objects and
get a better look at those to get an idea
of the composition of those objects. And then, assuming the
probe doesn't collide with anything or suffer any other kind
of failures, it will continue space monsters, yeah, starn sandworms.

(44:04):
Assuming none of that happens, it will just continue on
its way and eventually enter interstellar space, following in the
footsteps of Voyager one, which did that back in two
thousand twelve, although we didn't get confirmation of until much later.
So a voyager to still not in the interstellar space yet,
So which is going to be the first one to
reach Planet X. Oh, by the way, this has confirmed

(44:28):
there is no planet X, unless it's like maybe what
if what if Planet X is just on the opposite
end of Pluto's orbit further out, Well, then New Horse
wouldn't have any idea, right, you know, I actually have
heard I think people say it's possible for there to
be larger objects way out there somewhere in the Kuiper
Belt where we can't see it because it doesn't radiate

(44:49):
or reflect enough light for us to detect. And who knows,
they might be right. It's just one of those things
where you know, we have certainly been looking out there.
But if it's because there so far away and they're
they're they're large, but not like like large in the
sense of Jupiter large. They're not large enough for it
to to reflect enough light for us to detect easily.

(45:13):
I don't see why that's impossible large and made vent
of black. Yeah, it could be that they just absorbed
light to the point where it's it's darker than what
black is, you know, like that material developed here on Earth,
but a mysus place. It is it is, and it's
getting less mysterious as we send more missions out, like

(45:35):
new horizons. So this was really a lot of fun
to look into. I mean, it was great to see
the excitement in the general population as the images started
to come back and we got our first real close
up look of Pluto. I know some people thought, oh, well,
that's kind of sad. We've looked at all the planets now,
like now we've got now we've got images of all

(45:55):
the different planets. Where what's left. There's so much more left.
Oh yeah, oh yeah. You can always send better cameras.
You can always you can always send more instruments, you
can always go further out, you can always land more
stuff on weird stuff like comments. My goodness, people, we've
got so many other things we can learn about. So
and that's just within our solar system, let alone beyond it.

(46:18):
So do not worry that we're running out of mystery.
That is a ridiculous fear. It's a It is a
a an enormous resource that we have only begun to sample,
or just wallowing in it. Yeah. So hey, if you
guys want to wallow in other stuff, preferably topics about
the future, send us some comments and questions and suggestions

(46:39):
we would love to hear from you. Send us your
rant about planet X. Yeah, that's that, or you can
send that to stuff they don't want you to know.
But our email address is fw thinking at how Stuff
Works dot com. You can also drop us a line
on Twitter, Google Plus, or Facebook. At Twitter and Google Plus,
we are FW thinking. Go to Facebook search fw thinking

(47:00):
we'll pop up. You can leave us a message there.
We do read all of them, and we look forward
to talking to you again really soon. For more on
this topic in the future of technology, visit forward thinking
dot com, brought to you by Toyota. Let's go Places,