APOD: Wright Mons in Color (2016 Jan 15)

[APOD Robot]

Wright Mons in Color

Explanation: Informally named Wright Mons, a broad mountain about 150 kilometers across and 4 kilometers high with a wide, deep summit depression is featured in this inset image captured during the New Horizons flyby of Pluto in July 2015. Of course, broad mountains with summit craters are found elsewhere in the Solar System, like the large shield volcano Mauna Loa on planet Earth or giant Olympus Mons on Mars. New Horizons scientists note the striking similarity of Pluto's Wright Mons, and nearby Piccard Mons, to large shield volcanoes suggests the two could be giant cryovolcanoes that once erupted molten ice from the interior of the cold, distant world. In fact, found on a frozen dwarf planet Wright Mons could be the largest volcano in the outer Solar System. Since only one impact crater has been identified on its slopes, Wright Mons may well have been active late in Pluto's history. This highest resolution color image also reveals red material sparsely scattered around the region.

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[ygmarchi]

Amazing. I know only one other world so complex and varied.

[Guest]

Red Stuff? I am guessing the image is color enhanced, but is this 'red' along the lines of iron oxide (like Mars)? Or maybe the result of something like Serratia Marcescens taking an opportunity to thrive during liquid availability periods. Or some other chemical combination giving that hue?

[JohnD]

All the peaks in that enlargement are about the same size and shape, which is a symmetrical triangle in section. Some are conic, some longer in one direction. Such symmetry would suggest they are made of a single, homogeneous material. I think water ice has been suggested?

But no mountain or mountain range on Earth is like that. Even the comparison to a shield volcano stretches comparison towards ridicule. A shield volcano just doesn't have a circle of peaks, does it? Just a smooth mound. I'm saying that we are too far from geology to make simple comparisons, and a new plutology is needed, to reflect the wholly different materials and processes. I'm sure that is being developed, but we should be careful in using the old terms.
JOhn

[Cousin Ricky]

There is a word “miles” in the illustration. What is this word, “miles”?

[clayrog]

So, exactly what IS "erupted molten ice from the interior of the cold, distant world". Don't we usually call that WATER?

[Rules For]

All the peaks in that enlargement are about the same size and shape, which is a symmetrical triangle in section. Some are conic, some longer in one direction. Such symmetry would suggest they are made of a single, homogeneous material. I think water ice has been suggested?

But no mountain or mountain range on Earth is like that. Even the comparison to a shield volcano stretches comparison towards ridicule. A shield volcano just doesn't have a circle of peaks, does it? Just a smooth mound. I'm saying that we are too far from geology to make simple comparisons, and a new plutology is needed, to reflect the wholly different materials and processes. I'm sure that is being developed, but we should be careful in using the old terms.
JOhn

JohnD, the suspected volcano is to the left of those peaks. See here: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/wp-conte ... d-Mons.jpg

[neufer]

So, exactly what IS "erupted molten ice from the interior of the cold, distant world".
Don't we usually call that WATER?

• We usually call that SLUSH.

[rstevenson]

There is a word “miles” in the illustration. What is this word, “miles”?

It's part of an ancient system of measurement still used in the USA, Liberia and Myanmar. One mile is roughly equivalent to 10,000 of King Henry I of England's shinbones, or about 100,000 of his thumbbones, or 5000 or so of his foot (right or left is unknown.) Problem is, we don't really know how big he was, except that his nickname wasn't Longshanks. Other parts of his anatomy were suggested as units of measure, but it was thought confusion would arise with a then common unit of volume, the peck.

Rob

[neufer]

There is a word “miles” in the illustration. What is this word, “miles”?

It's part of an ancient system of measurement still used in the USA, Liberia and Myanmar. One mile is roughly equivalent to 10,000 of King Henry I of England's shinbones, or about 100,000 of his thumbbones, or 5000 or so of his foot (right or left is unknown.) Problem is, we don't really know how big he was, except that his nickname wasn't Longshanks. Other parts of his anatomy were suggested as units of measure, but it was thought confusion would arise with a then common unit of volume, the peck.

1 mile = 8 furlongs = 80 chains = 1760 yards = 5280 feet = 63360 inches
(Longshanks's shankbone = 6.34 inches wide )

<<The metric system has been officially sanctioned for use in the United States since 1866, but the US remains the only industrialised country that has not adopted the metric system as its official system of measurement. Many sources also cite Liberia and Myanmar as the only other countries not to have done so.>>

---

<<The Mars Climate Orbiter (formerly the Mars Surveyor '98 Orbiter) was a 750 lb robotic space probe launched by NASA on December 11, 1998 to study the Martian climate, Martian atmosphere, and surface changes. However, on September 23, 1999, communication with the spacecraft was lost as the spacecraft went into orbital insertion, due to ground-based computer software which produced output in non-SI units of pound-seconds (lbf s) instead of the metric units of newton-seconds (N s) specified in the contract between NASA and Lockheed. The spacecraft encountered Mars on a trajectory that brought it too close to the planet, causing it to pass through the upper atmosphere and disintegrate. The cost of the mission was $327.6 million total for the orbiter and lander, comprising $193.1 million for spacecraft development, $91.7 million for launching it, & $42.8 million for mission operations.>>

[Chris Peterson]

There is a word “miles” in the illustration. What is this word, “miles”?

It's an indicator of just how far the Roman soldiers had to march to spread that red stuff around.

[neufer]

There is a word “miles” in the illustration. What is this word, “miles”?

It's an indicator of just how far the Roman soldiers had to march to spread that red stuff around.

<<The dark red color is thought to be due to tholins (after the ancient Greek word θολός/tholós meaning "sepia ink") falling out of Pluto's atmosphere. The term "tholin" was coined by astronomer Carl Sagan and his colleague Bishun Khare to describe the difficult-to-characterize substances he obtained in his Miller-Urey-type experiments on the gas mixtures that are found in Titan's atmosphere. Tholins are a class of heteropolymer molecules formed by solar ultraviolet irradiation of simple organic compounds such as methane or ethane. Tholins do not form naturally on modern-day Earth, but they are found in great abundance on the surface of icy bodies in the outer Solar System. They usually have a reddish-brown appearance.>>

<<The Roman mile (mille passus, lit. "thousand-pace") consisted of a thousand paces of two steps each. The ancient Romans, marching their armies through uncharted territory, would often push a carved stick in the ground after each 1000 paces. Well fed and harshly driven Roman legionaries in good weather thus created longer miles. The distance was indirectly standardised by Agrippa's establishment of a standard Roman foot (Agrippa's own) in 29 BC, and the definition of a pace as 5 feet. An Imperial Roman mile thus denoted 5,000 Roman feet. Surveyors and specialized equipment such as the decempeda and dioptra then spread its use.>>

[MarkBour]

<<The Mars Climate Orbiter (formerly the Mars Surveyor '98 Orbiter) was ... lost as the spacecraft went into orbital insertion, due to ground-based computer software which produced output in non-SI units of pound-seconds (lbf s) instead of the metric units of newton-seconds (N s) specified in the contract. The cost of the mission was $327.6 million total for the orbiter and lander, comprising $193.1 million for spacecraft development, $91.7 million for launching it, & $42.8 million for mission operations.>>

As bad as throwing away $ 327 million is, that cost pales by comparison to the cost to generations of young American students, and also to our international relations and reputations. We actually take our kids in grade school, do a lame job of familiarizing them with SI units, and call this lost time "science education". Indeed, to a young mind, learning meters and kilograms is initially somewhat equated with science. Meanwhile, students in the rest of the world are getting down to actual material, and understanding it more for what it really is. To some extent, we are making ourselves the outsiders, the foreigners, in a science laboratory.

[MarkBour]

In the image, it does indeed appear as though the brown stuff has fallen on the white stuff (a nice opposition to life on Earth). And I wonder if these Tholins can sublimate back into the atmosphere when Pluto is in a warming cycle? If so, I'm wondering whether it is possibly the source of all of the little dimples in the plana.

[Chris Peterson]

<<The Mars Climate Orbiter (formerly the Mars Surveyor '98 Orbiter) was ... lost as the spacecraft went into orbital insertion, due to ground-based computer software which produced output in non-SI units of pound-seconds (lbf s) instead of the metric units of newton-seconds (N s) specified in the contract. The cost of the mission was $327.6 million total for the orbiter and lander, comprising $193.1 million for spacecraft development, $91.7 million for launching it, & $42.8 million for mission operations.>>

As bad as throwing away $ 327 million is, that cost pales by comparison to the cost to generations of young American students, and also to our international relations and reputations. We actually take our kids in grade school, do a lame job of familiarizing them with SI units, and call this lost time "science education". Indeed, to a young mind, learning meters and kilograms is initially somewhat equated with science. Meanwhile, students in the rest of the world are getting down to actual material, and understanding it more for what it really is. To some extent, we are making ourselves the outsiders, the foreigners, in a science laboratory.

To be fair, the actual "loss" was much less than the total mission cost, since much of the money went into technology development (which was not lost) and human and capital costs (which were not lost). And while it's a travesty that the U.S. does not adopt the SI system and teach it as primary units in school, the failure in this case was only peripherally related, since the people involved were certainly all very comfortable with SI units and used them for most things. There are simply a few areas where conventions hold, and this was one of them. Even in countries that are officially SI, there are pockets of usage that are not SI.

[Tekija]

In the image, it does indeed appear as though the brown stuff has fallen on the white stuff (a nice opposition to life on Earth). And I wonder if these Tholins can sublimate back into the atmosphere when Pluto is in a warming cycle? If so, I'm wondering whether it is possibly the source of all of the little dimples in the plana.

If you look carefully, there are dimples throughout the highlands as well. Must be could out there. Goosebumps everywhere.

[neufer]

To be fair, the actual "loss" was much less than the total mission cost, since much of the money went into technology development (which was not lost) and human and capital costs (which were not lost).

But certainly it is holding back the space programs of Liberia & Myanmar

Perhaps it would be easier if we first transfered to the
Furlong/Firkin/Fortnight (FFF) system ... and only then to the SI system:

• 5 furlongs ~ 1.00584 km
  1 furlong/fortnight ~ 0.9978 centimeters per minute

[b][color=#0000FF]Mileposts on the Yangon-Mandalay Expressway use miles followed by furlongs[/color][/b]

---

<<The Furlong/Firkin/Fortnight (FFF) system: The length unit of the system is the furlong , the mass unit is the mass of a firkin (from Middle Dutch vierdekijn meaning "fourth" of a beer barrel) of water, and the time unit is the fortnight.

Code: Select all

Unit 	Abbreviation 	Imperial unit 	SI unit
-----------------------------------------------------------------
furlong 	  fur 	      220 yards 	  201.168 m
firkin 	   fir 	       90 lb 	      40.8233133 kg
fortnight 	ftn 	       14 days 	  1,209,600 s

One microfortnight is equal to 1.2096 seconds. This has become a joke in computer science because in the VMS operating system, the TIMEPROMPTWAIT variable, which holds the time the system will wait for an operator to set the correct date and time at boot if it realizes that the current value is bogus, is set in microfortnights. This is because the computer uses a loop instead of the internal clock which has not been activated yet to run the timer. The documentation notes that "[t]he time unit of micro-fortnights is approximated as seconds in the implementation."

One furlong per fortnight (roughly one centimeter per minute)
is a speed which would be barely noticeable to the naked eye.

The speed of light is 1.8026×10¹² furlongs/fortnight.

Heat transfer coefficients are conventionally reported as:
BTUs per foot-fathom per furlong per degree Fahrenheit per fortnight.>>

[BMAONE23]

<<The Mars Climate Orbiter (formerly the Mars Surveyor '98 Orbiter) was ... lost as the spacecraft went into orbital insertion, due to ground-based computer software which produced output in non-SI units of pound-seconds (lbf s) instead of the metric units of newton-seconds (N s) specified in the contract. The cost of the mission was $327.6 million total for the orbiter and lander, comprising $193.1 million for spacecraft development, $91.7 million for launching it, & $42.8 million for mission operations.>>

As bad as throwing away $ 327 million is, that cost pales by comparison to the cost to generations of young American students, and also to our international relations and reputations. We actually take our kids in grade school, do a lame job of familiarizing them with SI units, and call this lost time "science education". Indeed, to a young mind, learning meters and kilograms is initially somewhat equated with science. Meanwhile, students in the rest of the world are getting down to actual material, and understanding it more for what it really is. To some extent, we are making ourselves the outsiders, the foreigners, in a science laboratory.

Considering that the $$$ expended went to buy materials and pay salaries of those involved in development and construction of the probe, the $$$ aren't lost per se, they are still in circulation here. The only investment that could even be considered as Lost is the time spent. But even the time isn't lost as it was an investment in the knowledge gained.

[Chris Peterson]

The only investment that could even be considered as Lost is the time spent. But even the time isn't lost as it was an investment in the knowledge gained.

The material costs associated with the probe itself are reasonably considered lost, as well as a great deal of the launch cost.

[JohnD]

JohnD, the suspected volcano is to the left of those peaks. See here: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/wp-conte ... d-Mons.jpg

Ah! That thing that looks like a burst pustule!
Now that must be a usable analogue!

Thanks, Rules!
John

[hamilton1]

Considering that the $$$ expended went to buy materials and pay salaries of those involved in development and construction of the probe, the $$$ aren't lost per se, they are still in circulation here. The only investment that could even be considered as Lost is the time spent.

So if you wreck your car then it doesn't matter, because the money you expended to buy the car and pay the auto workers is still in circulation?? Interesting logic...

[BMAONE23]

Considering that the $$$ expended went to buy materials and pay salaries of those involved in development and construction of the probe, the $$$ aren't lost per se, they are still in circulation here. The only investment that could even be considered as Lost is the time spent.

So if you wreck your car then it doesn't matter, because the money you expended to buy the car and pay the auto workers is still in circulation?? Interesting logic...

would depend on what was learned from the wreck and how heavily insured you were.

[Chris Peterson]

Considering that the $$$ expended went to buy materials and pay salaries of those involved in development and construction of the probe, the $$$ aren't lost per se, they are still in circulation here. The only investment that could even be considered as Lost is the time spent.

So if you wreck your car then it doesn't matter, because the money you expended to buy the car and pay the auto workers is still in circulation?? Interesting logic... :D

No, but if you wreck your car the economic loss isn't equal to the sum of all the costs that went into the production of that car. In fact, it's even possible that the entire economy benefits when you wreck your car.

[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

So if you wreck your car then it doesn't matter, because the money you expended to buy the car and pay the auto workers is still in circulation?? Interesting logic...

No, but if you wreck your car the economic loss isn't equal to the sum of all the costs that went into the production of that car. In fact, it's even possible that the entire economy benefits when you wreck your car.

[geckzilla]

Considering that the $$$ expended went to buy materials and pay salaries of those involved in development and construction of the probe, the $$$ aren't lost per se, they are still in circulation here. The only investment that could even be considered as Lost is the time spent.

So if you wreck your car then it doesn't matter, because the money you expended to buy the car and pay the auto workers is still in circulation?? Interesting logic...

No, but if you wreck your car the economic loss isn't equal to the sum of all the costs that went into the production of that car. In fact, it's even possible that the entire economy benefits when you wreck your car.

The alternative to the ever-growing economy! Recycling! Houses that fall down and cars that crash!