About This Club
Anyone can come join and have fun topics to talk about when it comes to Astronomy, Planetary Science and other related topics. So come have fun and be sure to always follow the rules of the community!
- What's new in this club
- Next topic?
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The Dwarf Planet Pluto
Why is Pluto no longer defined as a Planet For a long time, we thought Pluto was unique in the Kuiper Belt. But as astronomers discovered more and more about the Kuiper Belt (and the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter), we learned that there are lots of objects like Pluto. More like Pluto, in some ways, than Pluto is like the other planets. Finding all these new objects, it became necessary for astronomers to get more specific about what we mean by the word "planet," and figure out which category Pluto fit into. The three rules astronomers of the International Astronomical Union came up with to define a planet are: The object must orbit the sun; the object must be massive enough to be roughly spherical; and the object must have cleared its orbit of any objects of comparable mass to its own (that is, it must be gravitationally dominant in its orbit). Pluto satisfies the first two of these criteria, but not the third. Even one of its own moons, Charon, is about half of Pluto's size. So, rather than being the runt of the planet group, Pluto is now the "king" of the dwarf planet group! What are the Geological componets of Pluto? Astronomers believe that Pluto probably has a rocky core. Outside of that, but still deep in the interior, there's likely an ocean of water, covered by another layer of frozen water ice. The surface crust is a layer of various ices, mostly nitrogen ice, with giant mountains of water ice, and traces of methane and carbon monoxide ices. Can you breath on Pluto? Does it have a Atmosphere? Yes. Much like its crust, Pluto's atmosphere is composed of nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide. There are also haze particles in Pluto's atmosphere, which scatter blue light. These particles start out high in Pluto's atmosphere as ionized methane and nitrogen. As the ions interact with each other, they combine into more complex molecules, and start to collect an outer shell of volatile ices. As the haze particles get more massive, they start to fall through the atmosphere, collecting more ice. This "snow" falls to Pluto's surface a reddish gray.
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Jupiter's moons has water?!
Europa is the sixth-largest moon in the Solar System and Jupiter’s fourth-largest satellite. Despite its cracked and discolored appearance, it is the smoothest solid object in the Solar System; its highest peaks, of which there are few, only reach a few hundred meters tall, and large craters are rare. The crisscrossed streaks and splotches that run across the terrain are probably mostly due to relatively shallow fractures and different compositions of the ground, not the enormous canyons present on some other worlds. This smoothness means that the surface of the moon is fairly young, probably tens of millions of years old rather than billions, like some other objects. Somehow, the ice is being resurfaced and smoothed out faster than on many other worlds. The question of why that happens has not been definitively answered yet, but it probably has something to do with what’s below Europa’s surface. This frigid moon of Jupiter hides a tantalizing secret: a probable sea containing twice as much water as all of Earth’s oceans combined. While the icy shell is hard as a rock, the interior is warmer, heated by the flexing of its iron core and stone mantle. The side of Europa that’s closest to Jupiter experiences a stronger pull than the farther side, stretching the entire moon and probably causing the long cracks that run across its surface as well as heating the interior. The evidence that there is some sort of water or slush beneath Europa’s surface is fairly strong, based on models of how a buried ocean would affect the ice above it. Measurements of the moon’s magnetic field also hinted that there is some sort of electrically conductive fluid — such as salty water —flowing under the surface. There are even images from the Hubble Space Telescope that appear to show huge plumes of water vapor erupting from Europa’s south pole, although they are not high-resolution enough to be definitive. If the liquid ocean really is there, it could make Europa an especially promising place to look for life, because liquid water is crucial for life as we know it. But many mysteries remain about this huge moon, from the thickness of the ice shell to the details of what happens beneath it. Source - https://www.planetary.org/worlds/europa
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The ET topic!
One thing that has always pickled my mind when I thought about space was, Are we truely alone? Were we naturally created here on this planet? Is religion the answer to all our questons or is science? Here are some of my 2 cents on those questions. If the question “ are we truly alone? “; is asked then I say, NO; We are not truely alone as we are not the only living creature that exist we have seen many other fourms of bacterial life matter either in a comotosis statis or a thriving form of bacterial life in space and also on the moon. To the second question that is asked “ Were we naturally created here on this planet?,”. Honestly that is still a question in debate so I don’t have much to say on it but my own opinion on the matter, I have two opinions on it. My first opinion is that yes we were naturally created here as there is strong evidence to support it backed by decades of scientific research and historical study done. My second opinion on it is that no those dang martians planted us here 🤣. For the last and most often asked question on this topic “ Is religion the answer to all our questions or is science?”. Honestly it depends on the person and the culture of that person and their own personal view of the world we all collectivly live in.