Weird geology on Charon
As they await the arrival of more data from New Horizons, the science team have highlighted this interesting and entirely puzzling feature revealed in their first global image from Charon, shown in the image on the right, a mountain inside a depression. Note also the nearby rill-like depressions running from one crater to the next.
My first thought is that the mountain, which in this relatively low resolution image looks almost like a really gigantic boulder, is made of material denser than the ground in which it sits, and some heating event caused the ground to soften and collapse, dropping the mountain-sized boulder down into the sinkhole.
I am guessing of course. What we have here is a very alien environment, with geological processes in temperatures and densities and gravities to which we are wholly unfamiliar. What we would normally expect to happen is not something we should expect to normally happen on either Charon or Pluto.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
As they await the arrival of more data from New Horizons, the science team have highlighted this interesting and entirely puzzling feature revealed in their first global image from Charon, shown in the image on the right, a mountain inside a depression. Note also the nearby rill-like depressions running from one crater to the next.
My first thought is that the mountain, which in this relatively low resolution image looks almost like a really gigantic boulder, is made of material denser than the ground in which it sits, and some heating event caused the ground to soften and collapse, dropping the mountain-sized boulder down into the sinkhole.
I am guessing of course. What we have here is a very alien environment, with geological processes in temperatures and densities and gravities to which we are wholly unfamiliar. What we would normally expect to happen is not something we should expect to normally happen on either Charon or Pluto.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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