Pluto and Charon, when they were young, had hot cores for a few million years until their radiation-level dropped and the geological processes stopped. At that point their geology would have been literally frozen in place. The result would be high tide mountains, because the water mantles they would have possessed when they were warm would have been tidal (due to each other's presence). So when they froze, the tide would have eventually been held in place as a mountain range on both sides of the planet.
The same goes for every other Kuiper Belt Object that interacted with each other, as no doubt they did. The next hundred years are going to be a great age of discovery, I reckon. We should turn the Hubble Telescope on the outer Solar System, and find out how many KBO's there are out there.
We might be able to use them as habitats, with a bit of burrowing. They'll be geologically dead for billions of years, so it's not likely we're going to dig into a live magma chamber. Imagine that--a few thousand hollowed out worlds in the Kuiper Belt, home to a few million people each. :cool: (very cool) :D
For any further discussion on this subject, I would need to read the scientific sources.
I see statements like:
Pluto and Charon, when they were young, had hot cores for a few million years until their radiation-level dropped and the geological processes stopped..etc
I wonder about the category.
confirmed fact - theory supported by evidence - predicition following a hypothesis - wild idea - fantasy - wishfull thinking.
would help too.
Andre, when I say that Pluto and Charon both had warm interiors for a while (possibly not as long as I said in the intro) I'm assuming two things;
1) The proccess of accretion would have generated enough heat to cause melting of the body so that it melted together sufficiently to form a globe.
2) There was sufficient amount of radioactive material present in each body to keep the geology of Pluto and Charon buzzing for a while at least. Possibly not to the level of liqid oceans, but maybe the ice was slushy enough to be deformed and bulge out tidally.
"Current thinking suggests that Pluto and Charon instead formed as two independent bodies in the solar nebula. A collision between Pluto and a proto-Charon could have produced a debris ring around Pluto that reaccreted to form the present satellite. This scenario is similar to the current paradigm for the formation of the Moon as a result of the impact of a Mars-sized body with the Earth. The Moon appears to to be deficient in volatile elements relative to the Earth as a consequence of its high-temperature origin, and the absence of methane on Charon, along with the relatively high densities of both bodies in the Pluto-Charon system, can be attributed to a similar process."
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-54312
"Pluto is apparently made of a much greater proportion of rockier material than are the giant planets of the outer solar system. This may be the result of the kind of chemical reactions that took place during the formation of the planet under cold temperatures and low pressure. Many astronomers think Pluto was growing rapidly to be a larger planet when Neptune’s gravitational influence disturbed the region where Pluto orbits (the Kuiper Belt), stopping the process of planetary growth there. The Kuiper Belt is a ring of material orbiting the Sun beyond the planet Neptune that contains millions of rocky, icy objects like Pluto and Charon. Charon could be an accumulation of the lighter materials resulting from a collision between Pluto and another large Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) in the ancient past."
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle.aspx?refid=761562181
Do you have any references? I don't see how a mountain could form with resulting accretion process until you have a planet or a moon?
I don't mean a mountain of rock formed, valich. I mean that when Pluto was still warm--at the stage when there was still radioactive decay keeping the geological processes going--the ice layer would have been slushy enoug to be pliable. Pluto and Charon have been circling each other since God only knows when, and influencing each other tidally. When Pluto cooled off, my theory (as yet unproven, granted) is that the tidal bulge on each side of both worlds froze in position--i.e. mountains of ice, not rock. I apologise for not making myself clearer originally.
This would mean an instantaneous freezing, yet how could that be when Pluto rotates.
This would mean an instantaneous freezing, yet how could that be when Pluto rotates.
As I understand it Pluto and Charon rotate around each other in a mutual orbit of 6.4 days. (Correct me if I'm wrong).