Thursday, July 16, 2015

IT'S COLD OUT THERE AND THERE'S NO KIND OF ATMOSPHERE

As Pluto enjoys its  annual 15 minutes of fame, the General Theory of Relative Denial predicts a flurry of Watt's postings reminding us that there are no SUV's in the Kuiper belt and that Al Gore would weigh less than a thanksgiving  turkey on the surface of Charon.

The reality is of course that the frozen gases and radiation polymerized goo that answer for soil on the surfaces of  Kuiper Belt objects exist in a truly alien regime of physics and materials science : 

Plutonian natural history has few Earthly counterparts


https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Russell_Seitz/publication/260831527_Xenomict_energy_in_cold_solids_in_space/links/0a85e5327334354cd4000000.pdf