-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Crawley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thursday, February 22, 2001 10:37 PM
Subject: Re: Let's Go To Pluto and Europa!
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>> [Original Message]
>> From: Bruce Moomaw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> To: Icepick Europa Mailing List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> Date: 2/21/2001 9:04:36 AM
>> Subject: Re: Let's Go To Pluto and Europa!
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>> No target has been selected yet -- but the search is busily under way,
and
>> the current indications are that there is at least a 90% chance that a
>> Kuiper Belt object can be found within the range of a Pluto flyby probe.
>In
>> fact, a serious effort will be made to arrange flybys of two of them.
>> There's even been a proposal made to have the Pluto probe's own camera do
>> some searching for small nearby Kuiper Belt objects during its cruise
>phase.
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>With a 90% chance... has it been considered that Chimera and its moon - I
>mean Pluto and its moon - may be responsible for certain stray snow balls?
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Well, the favored view is that Charon, like our own Moon, was created when a
big object crashed into Pluto and knocked off a lot of debris, some of which
then reaccreted in orbit around the planet -- in which case of course a lot
of other pieces would have escaped from Pluto altogether. But there is so
much material in the Kuiper Belt -- hundreds of times as much as in the
Asteroid Belt! -- that of course only an extremely tiny fraction of it can
possibly consist of collisional debris from Pluto.
By the way, the table of contents for today's issue of "Science" lists a
debate in the Letters column -- involving something like a dozen
contributors -- over the question (God help us) of whether we should call
Pluto a planet, which is turning into the Angels On a Pin argument of our
time. I remain convinced that the best way to handle to this is simply to
point out to the public that -- because of our stunning recent discovery of
a whole big new section of the Solar System which had not been previously
known, containing many objects that fill the size gap between "planets" and
"asteroids" -- the whole planet-versus-asteroid distinction has become foggy
and has to be viewed in a completely new way. It's hard to get more
interesting to the layman than that.
Bruce Moomaw
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