X-rays Being Emitted By Pluto

[Dryson]

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/x-ray-detection-sheds-new-light-on-pluto.html

“Prior to Pluto, the most distant solar system body with detected X-ray emission was Saturn's rings and disk."

Could Pluto have at one time been part of the Rings of Saturn where the same disk material around Saturn formed into Pluto that form some reason found a new orbit around the Sun from possibly being struck by another object?

If Pluto is emitting X-rays like Saturn's rings and disk then could the same material be present on the surface of Pluto that is present in the disk around Saturn?

 

[PurpleBuddha]

I believe Saturn's rings emit X-rays because of solar winds bouncing off water ice. If Pluto is emitting them for the same reason (we don't know this to be true), then it really isn't evidence that Pluto came from Saturn's rings any more so than any other body that has water ice.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I agree. X-rays produced by interaction with energetic solar wind particles are not unique to Saturn (or comets for that matter) and neither is the underlying physical mechanism (Bremsstrahlung). The hypotheses stated in the link for the excess production of X rays might not be testable now that New Horizons is well beyond Pluto but it will be interesting to see what the observations are like for 2014 MU69 in 2019.

 

[Doom Shepherd]

The Sun emits X-rays. I think it's safe to say that the Sun was not part of Saturn's rings.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

It is possible that the substances on Pluto's surface are similar to those in Saturn's rings or on moons of outer solar system planets and that examining the X-ray spectrum would allow you to determine the composition to some extent. There are quite a few methods for using X rays to analyse material composition:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_fluorescence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_absorption_spectroscopy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_materials_analysis_methods#X

Pluto and Charon being ejected from orbit around a body such as Saturn when Saturn and Jupiter kicked Uranus and Neptune into more distant orbits in the early history of the solar system is not a completely untenable hypothesis. However, it's also not terribly interesting, to me at least.

 

[publiusr]

Something knocked an ice giant over--I find that interesting. I wonder if Pluto has some radioactive core elements of some kind--maybe something that made it to the surface.

 

[Dryson]

Pluto and Charon being ejected from orbit around a body such as Saturn when Saturn and Jupiter kicked Uranus and Neptune into more distant orbits in the early history of the solar system is not a completely untenable hypothesis. However, it's also not terribly interesting, to me at least.

It should be interesting to say the least due to the fact that rings around Saturn are thought to be younger than the dinosaurs. An large orbital around Saturn that might have been ejected could have been the object that is thought to have collided with Earth.

 

[sojourner]

The object that collided with Earth is still here. You can see part of it almost every night and the rest of it is under your feet.

 

[Doom Shepherd]

And Theia was definitely was not part of the Saturnian system.

Seriously, people HAVE to stop reading Velikovsky.

 

[DrCorby]

Pluto and Charon being ejected from orbit around a body such as Saturn when Saturn and Jupiter kicked Uranus and Neptune into more distant orbits in the early history of the solar system is not a completely untenable hypothesis. However, it's also not terribly interesting, to me at least.

Larry Niven used the general idea in his novel World of Ptaavs. About a billion years ago, a speacecraft traveling at a respectable fraction of lightspeed smacked into a moon of Neptune, knocking it into a skewed, retrograde orbit outside the solar ecliptic. A fun notion; but the book was written in the late 60s, I believe, when we knew a lot less about Pluto and the outer solar system.

More on-topic, as others have said, LOTS of astronomical objects radiate at X-Ray wavelengths. More analysis would be needed to determine the process producing that radiation. The factoid about Saturn's rings was not the most relevant detail in the story...