What's really weird about Pluto are these mountains - and yeah, they are really big mountains.
Our problem is we compare everything new with the familiar. We see mountains on Pluto and think, oh yeah, mountains like ours, and promptly think that's normal.
But the trouble is, it is not the slightest bit normal. Our mountains look they way they do because of plate tectonics pushing them up and erosion pulling them down (think of rain and floods ripping everything down again).
Pluto doesn't have rain. So how the frying chicken licken do you get mountains looking like ours?
What's really weird about Pluto are these mountains - and yeah, they are really big mountains.
Our problem is we compare everything new with the familiar. We see mountains on Pluto and think, oh yeah, mountains like ours, and promptly think that's normal.
But the trouble is, it is not the slightest bit normal. Our mountains look they way they do because of plate tectonics pushing them up and erosion pulling them down (think of rain and floods ripping everything down again).
Pluto doesn't have rain. So how the frying chicken licken do you get mountains looking like ours?
My college roomie (and member of my LSU championship trivia team, and bass player in our band) was creating some of the first pics of Pluto from four pixel (not megapixel) images at the beginning of his career. Now, he's seeing the planet from three Billion miles away.
He invited me to the launch of NH but I didn't grasp its importance and skipped it. (Me = idiot)
Now he's identifying Kuiper Belt Objects so NH doesn't hit them, and sifting through this other image data that's coming back from Pluto. It's the culmination of 35 years of work. I'm a bit proud of my (still) good friend. Last I saw him was a year ago when he flew in for the King Crimson shows in the Bay Area. We thought about going to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass but opted to spend all day at a pinball museum in Alameda - which was probably a better choice.
It's fun for me to watch this video. He starts very reserved and then his exuberance starts to show through as he talks about the coolness of what he's been doing.
Very cool. Such a great time for him to see this come to fruition.
A truly amazing mission. The spacecraft was launched almost 10 years ago, and took a pretty weird path to get to the Kuiper Belt. It was traveling so fast. Its fly by took only minutes, but it recorded an amazing amount of readings and photos. So much data, it will take it 16 months to transmit it all back to Earth.
I was actually hoping for some science! but I forgave him when I saw the beautiful jpeg plumes.
If you click on the image it takes you to his site where if you click on the image you get to the actual science. I think the Kuiper Beltloops were my favorite.
