Halloween Asteroid..in more ways that one...

[publiusr]

We are due for a "near" miss today.

Meet our guest:

http://earthsky.org/space/big-aster...tm_term=0_c643945d79-5feb18399d-394080473#big

Call it Golgotha

Misc info on Pluto:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1510.07704
http://arxiv.org/abs/1510.06604
http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/22/9598566/nasa-new-horizons-pluto-moon-kerberos

 

[scotthm]

Since you brought up Pluto...

Why does it seem that scientists are assuming the Pluto / Charon system was formed billions of years ago rather than millions of years ago?

Pluto's diverse surface geology and long-term activity raise fundamental questions about how small planets remain active many billions of years after formation.

Rather than guessing as to how Pluto could have remained geologically active for billions of years, shouldn't its activity cause us to at least consider that its formation is much more recent than we'd assumed? Perhaps proto-Pluto and proto-Charon met only a few hundred millions of years ago rather than billions.

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