Comments on: Plutoid Eris is Changing… But We Don't Know Why

By: sparkle sista ;)

sparkle sista ;) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:02:23 +0000

hahahahahahahahaha very funny mikel. giant hot dogs are stealing it to power their atom bombs and stink cannonballs to launch on Neptune and explode it.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
aha ha ha ha ha……… heh heh heh.

By: Devin

Devin — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 00:24:51 +0000

ruf, its eris, not xena. Time is unimportant. we could get the info in 1000 years and it would still be useful.

By: Vitor

Vitor — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 03:28:22 +0000

Maybe there was just a collison with an astro or maybe it is traveling to part of the outer space where it is going through some interstellar matter or even dark matter maybe~

By: Geoff

Geoff — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:21:42 +0000

Regarding the comment about NH being redirected towards Eris, post Pluto-flyby. Assuming the orbit diagram for 2003UB313 represents the current positions of solar system bodies then NH investigations of any KBO's are restricted to a fairly small cone of trajectories beyond Pluto; and way too small to consider Eris as a target.

Taking 9 years to reach ~30AU at Pluto, implies that ~100AU would take about 25-30 years – that is in the mid-2030s. By which time Eris will have moved further anti-clockwise around its orbit, or about 60 degress (at least away from NH crossing of Eris' orbit – say 100AU+ to the "plutoid")

Great idea, but get real (as they say)! It would require a spacecraft at least 10 or 20 times faster, with the ability to drastically change its trajectory path for that to be even remotely realistic.

Great article, though!!

Geoff

By: Mike Jackson

Mike Jackson — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:07:47 +0000

Edu:
"There is no such thing as non-heat producing matter."

Thanks. And I am aware that movement, including at the atomic level, IS heat. I was just trying to distinguish fusion level heat from cold distant (from the sun) type heat.

By: ruf

ruf — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:53:41 +0000

James said:

Maybe a chunk of rock/ice out there smashed into it???

YES! It was hit by a comet.
The better possibilirty is that two different hemispheres of Xena were observed. It could be a lot like Iapetus.

By: edu

edu — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:09:33 +0000

There is no such thing as non-heat producing matter. It just depends on what wavelength of the spectrum you are looking at. The Infrared signature of cold planets are very weak but still enough to be measured by high resolution spectroscopic analysis.

By: Jon

Jon — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:30:52 +0000

Could cyrovolcanism on a large enough scale alter a bodies orbit? Has that mechanism, or outspewing of gasses ever been attributed to modifying the orbit of comets from the kupier belt to start spinning or head in to the inner solar system?

By: marcellus

marcellus — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:39:12 +0000

Good point. Any chance that New Horizons could go on to Eris after the Pluto/Charon flyby in 2015? From what I've read earlier, it sounded like they'd have one more shot at some distant body.

By: James

James — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:37:59 +0000

Hmmm. The nitrogen moved suddenly from below the surface to above. Maybe a chunk of rock/ice out there smashed into it???

By: Jorge

Jorge — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:47:36 +0000

This is more a reply to the comment than to the article itself (which is great, apart from calling "moon" to the poor planet Eris ), but I fully agree that from a purely scientific point of vue spectroscopy is way more valuable than photography. However, we wouldn't have anywhere near as much public interest and support for these studies without the pictures, and that, as we know, ultimately translates into more students, more money and better instruments.

And besides, the two things complement eachother. We may find spectroscopically these changes in Eris and scratch our heads as to what causes them, but if we had a camera there and saw volcanic structures, we'd be a whole lot closer to actually knowing.

By: Mikel

Mikel — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:26:00 +0000

Come on guys. The answer is obvious. Little green guys from Aldeberan are mining the nitrogen.

By: AJames

AJames — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 08:40:41 +0000

Thanks for the insight. I'll have to modify my website on the Eris.

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 08:21:50 +0000

Not that I want to wish my life away, but its moments like these that make me wish New Horizons wasn't 7 years from Pluto.

By: SA Exile

SA Exile — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 07:33:42 +0000

A line from the head of the University of Leicester Dept of Physics and Astronomy.

"A picture is worth a thousand words but a spectrum is worth a thousand pictures."

By: Ian O'Neill

Ian O'Neill — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 06:09:28 +0000

Mike, you are right on the money. When I was working as a solar physics researcher I attended a memorable conference. There was a healthy mix of practical guys and us theorists there. However, one of the keynote speakers (a well-known solar astronomer) was keen to point out that so much more physics could be done if the theorists would "get real" and understand what the solar physics community needed.

His point was that rather than ploughing so much money into advanced optics to produce "media friendly" pictures, more work should be done in directing funds into advanced spectrometers. The depth of science that can be done will be far greater than just seeing small-scale "2D" features.

At the time I didn't understand his point and disregarded it, after all I thought more physics could be done by analysing a picture (who needs advanced spectrometers for a star — the Sun — that is on our doorstep?).

Only now am I understanding the power of spectroscopy, now I'm reading research about uncovering the surface composition of a minor planet 100 AU away, or digging deep into a star-forming region of a galaxy millions of light years distant.

I've recently blown the dust off my spectroscopy books with a renewed interest in the field

I am in awe of this research, although solar physics was fun, I sometimes think probing disant planets would be more exciting!

Cheers, Ian

By: Mike Jackson

Mike Jackson — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 05:44:21 +0000

I hate to sound so amateurish, but I am constantly amazed at the ability and value of spectroscopic reasearchers. To reach out that far to a small piece of non heat producing matter and discern atmospheric changes is just mind boggling.

Reaching out billions of light years to read chemistry and red shifts is amazing as well, but somehow a cold object like our "neighbor" seems more of a challenge. At any rate, spectroscopic research should receive a healthy amount of funding.

By: KG6YRA

KG6YRA — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 04:43:33 +0000

Very cool report. I'd like to hear the resutls of their experament.