Thanks to Creation Ministries for this daily InfoByte, sent to all Creation Magazine subscribers. about Pluto. This monkey finds it very uplifting to cast his mind and consider the vastness of space, wondering at the incredible creativity of the Almighty Creator of all things, who transcends all human understanding. Be of good cheer, who can thwart Him?

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Isaiah 14:26-27 “This is the plan determined for the whole world; this is the hand stretched out over all nations. 27 For the LORD Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart him? His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?”

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Gibber! Gibber!

Chugley

Pluto not done yet

by Donna Mullenax

Dead. Cold. Dark. Small. Old, very old. Many such words have been used to describe the dwarf planet Pluto, which orbits the sun very far away. In fact, it is an average of about 40 times as far from the sun as Earth is (i.e., 40 AU, or astronomical units). Pluto is much smaller than other planets—and even smaller than the continental USA—so was ‘demoted’ from planet status in 2006. Many thought Pluto would then fade away silently in the public consciousness.The spacecraft took the first detailed, close-up images of the surface of Pluto and its moon, Charon, while studying the composition of the dwarf planet. What it has found and continues to find has been surprising, inspiring, intriguing, and mind-blowing.

Secular scientists believe Pluto is 4.5 billion years (Ga) old. They also believed Pluto was dead, meaning geologically inactive. This is because, by being so small and far from the sun, if it were anywhere near that old, it would have lost all its internal heat long, long ago.

In 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft finally reached its destination to study what NASA called “a relic from the formation of the solar system”.¹ This was the first mission designed to study Pluto, its moons, and other objects in the Kuiper Belt. This belt is a vast region of space beyond Neptune’s orbit, containing icy bodies including Pluto.

The spacecraft took the first detailed, close-up images of the surface of Pluto and its moon, Charon, while studying the composition of the dwarf planet. What it has found and continues to find has been surprising, inspiring, intriguing, and mind-blowing. Pluto is shocking the science world by not being cold, dark, dead, and all the similar adjectives used to describe it. The greatest surprise is that Pluto does not appear to be old.

Much has already been written about the initial findings from the New Horizons mission.^2,3,4 NASA planetary scientist Dale Cruikshank has been leading teams researching Pluto and its cryovolcanoes using data collected by the New Horizons spacecraft. While ordinary volcanoes eject molten rock, cryovolcanoes eject easily evaporated substances like water, ammonia, and methane into an atmosphere well below their freezing points, turning them solid in an instant. This is why they are also loosely called ‘ice volcanoes’.

Several areas of Pluto studied are believed to be recently active cryovolcanoes. Among these areas are Virgil Fossae and Viking Terra.^5,6 Similar icy volcanoes have also been discovered on the planetary moons Enceladus (orbiting Saturn) and Triton (orbiting Neptune).⁴

A caldera is a large crater-like structure left behind by a major volcanic eruption. The caldera’s shape results from the emptying of the magma (in this case cryomagma) chamber, followed by the roof and sides collapsing to give the sunken appearance. Recently, Cruikshank’s team has focused on the Kiladze Caldera, 44 km (27 miles) in diameter.

Kiladze is different from the other cryovolcanoes on Pluto. It is believed to be a resurgent caldera, having erupted, collapsed, erupted again, collapsed again, etc. The number of repeated eruptions/collapses is unknown, but at least one eruption produced ejecta of over 1,000 km³.⁷ This is why Kiladze is sometimes referred to as a ‘supervolcano’, which means a volcano capable of ejecting at least 1,000 cubic km (240 cubic miles) of material in one event.

Kiladze Caldera appears to have been active not long ago due to its water-ice composition rather than methane and nitrogen like the surrounding surfaces. Using spectral analysis from the New Horizons spacecraft, the Cruikshank group determined the water-ice lava on the surface of Kiladze Caldera is a mixture of water-ice and ammonia, which is probably in the form of a salt or other compound.The question is then, how? How can a cold, dead planet still have volcanoes? How can a very old, small planet be active? Where would the energy come from, if not from internal heat?

Kiladze also appears young because of the relatively thin layer of material deposited from the atmosphere on its surface. Even though the sun is far away, solar radiation photochemically converts the atmospheric gases to heavier particles that fall to the surface, known as haze material.⁸ Secular calculations assume the average rate at which this is deposited is 3.5 m (11.5 ft) per billion years.⁸ The same paper indicates that a layer only 10 µm (10 microns or millionths of a metre) in depth could be “presumed to be optically thick”. I.e. it would prevent the instruments from detecting the spectral signature of the water-ice below it. Since the water-ice has been detected, the haze layer must be thinner than that. However, they concede this would only take about 2,500 years to accumulate, even at their presumed rate. Perhaps this is why the paper also speculates that maybe it takes more thickness to block the signal. It says that if it took 10 mm to do so, it would still only require about 3 million years after Kiladze last erupted to form this thickness of haze. That age for Kiladze would of course be extremely young next to Pluto’s assumed age of 4.5 billion years. In other words, Kiladze shows that volcanic activity was still occurring, in the secular timescale, billions of years after it should have been geologically ‘dead’.

The question is then, how? How can a cold, dead planet still have volcanoes? How can a very old, small planet be active? Where would the energy come from, if not from internal heat? But how can Pluto be so small and still have internal heat? These are the questions scientists are trying to answer, which impact our understanding of the age of Pluto.

Internal heat can be produced in several ways:

1. From the sun. But Pluto is too far away (about 6 billion km) to receive any significant heat from the sun.
2. From radioactivity. But Pluto is too small to have enough radioactive materials to produce the needed heat.
3. From tidal heating due to interaction with its largest moon Charon. This may play some role in generating the internal heat of, for example, Jupiter’s moon Io. But Jupiter is massive—over 1 million times more massive than Charon. Even though Charon is closer to Pluto than Io is to Jupiter, the tidal forces are still about 100 times smaller. That is, way too small to play a significant part.
4. From internal heat present at its formation. This seems the only remaining possibility.

And that is where the dilemma is for long-agers. If Pluto were 4.5 billion years old, its internal heat would have vanished billions of years ago.

The New Horizons mission continues to provide evidence that Pluto is not dead but geologically active, thus containing internal heat. NASA scientists have stated that there is “no lower limit to the age” of the cryovolcanoes because they may still be active.⁹

Pluto, considered a cold, dark object distantly orbiting the Sun, is casting light on our Creator. Data from the New Horizons mission to Pluto and beyond continues to provide evidence that the solar system is not billions of years old, but young as the Bible indicates. As the Psalmist said, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). Pluto is not dead. Pluto is declaring God’s sovereignty and omniscience, and there is likely more to come.

Posted on homepage: 18 November 2024

References and notes

1. New Horizons, active mission; science.nasa.gov/mission/new-horizons, acc. Feb 2024. Return to text.
2. New Horizons: NASA’s Mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, Discovery stories, acc. Feb 2024; pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/Discovery-Stories.php. Return to text.
3. Spencer, W., Rediscovering Pluto, J. Creation 29(3):3–5, 2015; creation.com/rediscovering-pluto. Return to text.
4. Coppedge, D. The New Pluto, Creation 38(1):12–13, 2015; creation.com/the-new-pluto. Return to text.
5. Cruikshank, D. et al., Recent cryovolcanism in Virgil Fossae on Pluto, Icarus 330, 155–168, 2019. Return to text.
6. Cruikshank, D. et al., Cryovolcanic flooding in Viking Terra on Pluto, Icarus 356, article id.113786, 2021. Return to text.
7. Cruikshank, D. et al., Kiladze Caldera: A possible ‘supervolcano’ on Pluto*, arXiv 2310.10904, 2023. Return to text.
8. Grundy, W.M. et al., Pluto’s haze as a surface material, Icarus, 314:232–245, 2018. Return to text.
9. Brown, D., NASA, Seeing Pluto in a new light, youtu.be/0jTdaOhG9wE?si=qIthBLQEUN70a7IS (at 20:18–20), 15 Jul 2015. Return to text.