New simulations of Pluto’s atmosphere
New simulations of Pluto’s atmosphere, created using data obtained during the 2015 fly-by by New Horizons of Pluto, suggest that the planet’s thin atmosphere, mostly made up of nitrogen, generally blows in a retrograde direction when compared with the planet’s rotation.
Bertrand and his colleagues set out to determine how circulating air – which is 100,000 times thinner than that of Earth’s – might shape features on the surface. The team pulled data from New Horizons’ 2015 flyby to depict Pluto’s topography and its blankets of nitrogen ice. They then simulated the nitrogen cycle with a weather forecast model and assessed how winds blew across the surface.
The group discovered Pluto’s winds above 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) blow to the west — the opposite direction from the dwarf planet’s eastern spin — in a retro-rotation during most of its year. As nitrogen within Tombaugh Regio vaporizes in the north and becomes ice in the south, its movement triggers westward winds, according to the new study.
The press release is very badly written. It tries to make it sound as this work discovered the atmosphere of Pluto, and that this process is more unique in the solar system than it is. It also neglects to mention that we only have good information about one hemisphere of Pluto. The fly-by did not see the planet’s other half, and so any computer model based on New Horizons’ data is by definition guaranteed to be half incomplete, with gigantic uncertainties.
Still, it gives us another example of the unexpected complexity of the geological processes on Pluto, something no one expected for a place so far from the Sun where there is so little energy to drive such processes.
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New simulations of Pluto’s atmosphere, created using data obtained during the 2015 fly-by by New Horizons of Pluto, suggest that the planet’s thin atmosphere, mostly made up of nitrogen, generally blows in a retrograde direction when compared with the planet’s rotation.
Bertrand and his colleagues set out to determine how circulating air – which is 100,000 times thinner than that of Earth’s – might shape features on the surface. The team pulled data from New Horizons’ 2015 flyby to depict Pluto’s topography and its blankets of nitrogen ice. They then simulated the nitrogen cycle with a weather forecast model and assessed how winds blew across the surface.
The group discovered Pluto’s winds above 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) blow to the west — the opposite direction from the dwarf planet’s eastern spin — in a retro-rotation during most of its year. As nitrogen within Tombaugh Regio vaporizes in the north and becomes ice in the south, its movement triggers westward winds, according to the new study.
The press release is very badly written. It tries to make it sound as this work discovered the atmosphere of Pluto, and that this process is more unique in the solar system than it is. It also neglects to mention that we only have good information about one hemisphere of Pluto. The fly-by did not see the planet’s other half, and so any computer model based on New Horizons’ data is by definition guaranteed to be half incomplete, with gigantic uncertainties.
Still, it gives us another example of the unexpected complexity of the geological processes on Pluto, something no one expected for a place so far from the Sun where there is so little energy to drive such processes.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
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