It's strange that a body so far away from any energy source would still have geologic activity.
edited 15th Jul '15 6:07:30 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
Except Pluto and Charon seem to have fairly young surfaces. Hence... I don't think the configuration that we're seeing now has existed for all that long, stellar-system speaking. Also, the two are pretty close, and many of the other dots (well: rugby balls) orbiting around the pair are in some very fishy trajectories.
The smash that created this lot? Can't have been all that long ago (which might also explain the geology: they're still settling down?). Proto!Pluto was likely as old as most of the rest of the system, but... like Proto!Earth, sometimes, accidents happen that change the game. And, I'd say Proto!Pluto got lucky: a bit more force, and smithereeny, dusty, rubble cloud o' rugby balls and even tinier (if more) marbles. -_-
Take Uranus and Neptune and their orbit-switching and traveling outward games...
edited 15th Jul '15 7:08:51 PM by Euodiachloris
A molten core for geology to happen with? It takes quite a while even for a small ball to cool down from a mega hit. But, that hit would provide a lot of heat for a while. :/
Even gravity games with Charon, Neptune and/or other icy balls way out on the other side of their orbit can't possibly supply enough tidal energy to keep a teeny, tiny geologic dynamo ticking for 4 billion years, surely? Unless you're suggesting Pluto lucked out with a concentrated mass of radioactive material somehow?
edited 15th Jul '15 7:18:43 PM by Euodiachloris
There are mountains of ice. What that tells me is that the surface of Pluto (and other objects in the Kuiper belt) is constantly getting painted by ice in the system. See Iapetus.
Also, I see plenty of craters. They're just not huge. Because it's the Kuiper belt. Not every crater is like Mimas.
edited 16th Jul '15 5:56:43 AM by AnotherGuy
The mountains on Pluto likely formed no more than 100 million years ago — mere youngsters in a 4.56-billion-year-old solar system. This suggests the close-up region, which covers about one percent of Pluto’s surface, may still be geologically active today.
“This is one of the youngest surfaces we’ve ever seen in the solar system,” said Jeff Moore of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team (GGI) at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.
Unlike the icy moons of giant planets, Pluto cannot be heated by gravitational interactions with a much larger planetary body. Some other process must be generating the mountainous landscape.
“This may cause us to rethink what powers geological activity on many other icy worlds,” says GGI deputy team leader John Spencer at Sw RI.
Of course, duh. As soon as australopiths stated getting really serious with their grilling skills, the meetings and memos started. Pluto probably gets a regular scrubbing and resurfacing every 1 million years or so just to fox us.
Actually: I now have images of Kuiper belt swap meets and/or boot sales. "Hey, Sedna! Heard you were looking for some crystaline methane, girl! This occasional says he's got some if you can spare a little bog standard water in a glancing fly-by."
Tombaugh Regio is a big pile of frozen CO.
Evidence of a geologically active Pluto.
edited 18th Jul '15 7:56:51 AM by AnotherGuy
Is it wrong that I want to name one of Pluto's features after Yuggoth?
It'll be good company for Cthulhu.
edited 18th Jul '15 10:05:21 AM by IFwanderer
1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KVWell, some Utusan Malaysia readers don't believe that New Horizons made it to Pluto
.
Well, Utusan Malaysia readers can be compared to those who read the Daily Mail, although this applies to almost every Malay newspaper out there to some extent.
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot

Pluto is as old as the solar system, as are all Kuiper belt objects.
Charon could look "youthful" because Pluto takes the hits normally aimed at it - as a "double planet", Pluto is constantly orbiting the epicenter as well.
A little nostalgia: the first time
anyone got any sort of detail of Pluto, back in 1996.
edited 15th Jul '15 5:53:30 PM by AnotherGuy