Pluto: Why So Smooth?

Fantastic news, Science Fans! It took it's sweet time (about 4.5 hours at the speed of light) but we finally got the first data from the New Horizons spacecraft. And even better than that: there is already a genuine mystery to puzzle out. So far we have two great pictures and some data on methane density.

The first picture, below, is of Pluto itself; it is a close up of the now famous 'heart' region. For scale, some of these peaks are about 11,000 feet high, which is comparable with mountains here on earth. What is interesting is that there are hardly any craters at all in this picture. It's very unlikely that this is because Pluto hasn't been hit by any meteors so we have to conclude that it means this surface is a very new one, and when we say very new here we mean about 100 million years old. Therefore, in the recent geological past, a process must have occurred to create this new surface. Generally this could be achieved by the planet being geologically active, like the earth is, with earthquakes and volcanoes and such churning up the place and destroying any evidence of crater impacts; or, a very large mass nearby can literally cause tides in the rock that cause them to grind and move and create heat again destroying any impact craters that might be around. The problem is that Pluto is both too small and cold to be geologically active and there is nothing large enough nearby to create tidal forces. We have a mystery.

The next picture, below, is of Pluto's largest moon, Charon, and here we see the same puzzling phenomenon. It's surprisingly smooth, there aren't all that many obvious craters; conjure (or Google) an image of our pock marked moon for comparison and the lack of craters will be much more obvious. The same argument applies here as to Pluto and we simply don't yet have an explanation. I guess it's not completely impossible that just by chance the two bodies have avoided impacts for several billions of years, but given that we know the Kuiper belt, of which Pluto is a part, is chock full of rocks and potential meteors this really does seem extremely unlikely. Do not, however, be disheartened. If there's one thing that scientists like it's a mystery. If you ask a question and the answer doesn't throw up at least a dozen new questions then you're doing it wrong.

These images are just the first tranche of what will ultimately be a deluge of data, frustratingly most of that is still on the New Horizon's craft and it will take weeks or even months for it all to be beamed back home. These initial images will have to keep us busy for a little while but one thing is for certain; we have lots of new and exciting discoveries to make about our former planetary cousin.

New Horned Dinosaur Discovered

Triceratops has always been my favourite dinosaur, it's just so freaking awesome looking. So I was very excited to come across a new paper in PLOS ONE by the curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History giving the details of a new member of the ceratopsids. The venerable old lady pictured below has been named Wendiceratops after Wendy Sloboda, the veteran fossil hunter who discovered this particular fossil bed in Alberta in 2010.

Just like triceratops wendiceratops would have been a herbivore cropping away at medium length grass, much like rhinos today. The horns would have been used for defence from predators and for competition when mating, the frill could have been used for display and perhaps also to keep the animal cool like an elephant's ears. The interesting thing about this find is that it actually pre-dates triceratops by several million years and represents a second independent evolution of a conical nose horn in this family.

Pluto Revealed

I, for one, am excited. 3,462 days ago a rocket was launched carrying the New Horizons spacecraft. Its mission was to conduct the first ever flyby of the planet Pluto. Yes, that's right, the planet pluto. Back then it was still a planet but as every 8 year old but few 38 year olds know Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006 and we now have a solar system with 8 planets in it. The problem was that we started to find a lot of other objects out there that were about the same size as Pluto so, if we were going to keep pluto, then we would have to make room for these other objects too and very soon we might have a solar system with a couple of dozen planets in it. Good luck getting the 8 years olds to memorise all those.

Anyhoo, Pluto being so very small (only a couple of thousand kilometres across) and receiving only about one thousandth of the sunlight we enjoy it is quite difficult to see. Even when we point the mighty Hubble space telescope at it we fail to get images with any great detail in them. The image on the right was the best we had until new Horizons started edging closer in the last few weeks.

Then last weekend, at a distance of about 1 million miles from Pluto, the image below was beamed back from 3 billion miles away. The increase in resolution is marked and will have the Geology, Geophysics and Imaging nerds at John Hopkins university very excited; as it will all of us interested in going boldly where no one has ever gone before. And the best part? It's only going to get better. The craft will pass within 8,000 miles of the planet's surface today and, asides, from all the cool science that will be done, should take some pretty awesome pictures before speeding off into the outer solar system at 50,000 miles per hour.

Images courtesy of NASA

Non-Human Tool Use

Humans are not the only animals to use tools. Chimps have been seen to use various different tools including anvils and hammers, spears and probes and even ravens can use objects around them to solve problems (awesome, short videos here and here).

Slightly less closely related to us than chimps are the sexually legendary bonobos. In a recent study bonobos in zoos and in sanctuaries were shown food hidden underground, underneath heavy objects or in the cavities of long bones. A set of potential tools were then left in their enclosure for them to find a use for. The tools were antlers, short sticks, long ticks and stones. One bonobo modified the sticks to turn them into spears and defensive barriers, another used an angular stone to completely bisect a long bone. About half of the animals observed were able to use the tools in some way with the ones in sanctuaries generally performing better than those in the zoos.

These animals were all captive or semi-captive and now the challenge is to observe similar behaviours in wild individuals; a difficult task as bonobos are only found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and any country with the word democratic in it name is, well, not always conducive to vigorous academic research. If wild bonobos are found using tools then it pushes the trait further back into evolutionary history than previously thought to about 5 million years ago, the time at which bonobos and us humans last shared a common ancestor.

Accuracy Redefined

A new paper in Nature Communications gives details on the most accurate atomic clock to ever be built. Researchers from Intel took a clock they produced last year and improved upon the design by adding a pair of highly accurate thermometers, one each to measure the temperature inside and outside of the device. With the data provided they could control for tiny variations between the two and add an extra layer of accuracy to the strontium based clock. The new and improved time keeper is now accurate to one second in 15 billion years. Yes, 15 billion years. That's longer than the universe itself has existed. For context, your wristwatch will lose 1 second every 2 days or so.

Einstein's relativity says that time itself runs slower the further it is measured from a gravity well. This clock is so exquisitely finely tuned that it would run at a noticeably different pace if its height was changed by a mere 2 centimetres.