The Pluto – Charon Binary Likely Formed by Fission

The possibility that Charon was born from Pluto by fission was raised soon after Charon’s discovery. Now that the New Horizons mission has given us a close look at their surfaces, global surface features on both bodies appear to confirm the fission hypothesis. Pluto’s surface features are underlain by global parallel bands that I interpret […]

Pluto’s Subtle Global Stripes: Key to Charon’s Origin

They say that the human eye is very good at detecting patterns. When the first high resolution mosaic images of the full disk of Pluto were released I got a strong impression that there were a series of diagonal but parallel lines across it. The impression is particularly strong in this collection of the individual […]

Pluto: The Big Picture – Convection, Evaporation, Flooding, Global Banding & Rotational Fission

1. The movement of soft ices in convection cells is carrying warm ice onto Pluto’s surface. This ice evaporates while moving to the edge of each cell, supplying Pluto’s atmosphere with nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide. At the edge of each cell the soft ice, now cold, is subducted back into Pluto’s interior. The methane […]

Pluto’s 130 km wide iceberg (actually it’s a ‘crust-berg’)

To Sputnik Planum’s story To “Pluto: The Big Picture” The jagged mountain ranges along Sputnik Planum’s western shore, from al-Idrisi Montes to Norgay Montes, are made of fragments of Pluto’s crust. A section of crust was shattered and the pieces were washed up on the shore by an icy tsunami. At first sight Baré Montes […]

There’s a Hole Under Sputnik Planum – Here is its Outline

Back to “Pluto: The Big Picture” To Sputnik Planum’s Story The the likely location of the rim of the opening that has allowed soft ices of flood out onto the surface of Pluto is marked with broken lines. The actual edge now lies miles beneath the actively light colored and convecting ices of Sputnik […]

20 Mile Long Slabs of Crust Stacked like Flagstones in a Dump

Back to “Pluto: The Big Picture” To the story of Sputnik Planum Looking like giant paving stones that have been ripped up and dumped, these slabs were once part of a crust that covered the ices of the Sputnik Planum. They are around 3 miles thick and up to 20 miles wide. They now form […]

Glacial Floods Push Down Pluto’s Crust

Back to “Pluto: The Big Picture” Go to the full story of Pluto’s Cryovolcanism The ice tsunami In the north of Sputnik Planum ice appears to be flowing onto ancient terrain, along with its irregular polygon shapes. [Note that it’s not yet clear whether the ice of Sputnik Planum is predominantly frozen methane or nitrogen]. […]