Useless Facts, Badly Drawn #423: Quaoar.
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#quaoar #dwarfplanets #astronomy #space #strangebuttrue #weirdplanets #planets #solarsystem #strangenewworlds #pluto #neptune #weywot #funfacts #facts #didyouknow #comics #webcomics #uselessfacts #uselessfactsbadlydrawn

How did #Pluto get its heart? Scientists say it involved a cosmic "splat." (Yes, that's the scientific term.) The newly published study is a nice follow-up to my book about the little guy, "The Case for Pluto." https://cosmiclog.com/2024/04/15/how-did-pluto-get-its-heart-scientists-suggest-an-answer/ #Space #DwarfPlanets

How did Pluto get its heart? Scientists suggest an answer
The most recognizable feature on Pluto is its “heart,” a relatively bright valentine-shaped area known as Tombaugh Regio. How that heart got started is one of the dwarf planet’s deepest mysteries — but now researchers say they’ve come up with the most likely scena
https://cosmiclog.com/2024/04/15/how-did-pluto-get-its-heart-scientists-suggest-an-answer/
#UniverseToday #Astronomy #DwarfPlanets #KuiperBelt #NewHorizons #Pluto #Space

Even Eris and Makemake Could Have Geothermal Activity
https://www.universetoday.com/165777/even-eris-and-makemake-could-have-geothermal-activity/ #astronomy #DwarfPlanets #geothermal #pluto #Eris #Makemake #methane

#Eris and #Makemake may be dwarf planets, but they're not dead planets: Scientists analyzed data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and found evidence pointing to geothermal activity deep within those mini-worlds. https://cosmiclog.com/2024/02/16/webb-telescope-detects-activity-within-dwarf-planets/ #Space #JWST #DwarfPlanets #Planets

News from the Kuiper Belt

SwRI scientists find evidence of geothermal processes producing methane from within icy dwarf planets Eris and Makemake

press release https://swri.org/press-release/swri-scientists-find-evidence-of-geothermal-activity-within-icy-dwarf-planets

Icarus paper https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2024.115999

Eris may be larger than Pluto (we can't be sure as it's apparently very difficult to get an accurate measure of how big such distant planets actually are) and it was initially described as the tenth planet. It was the discovery of Eris that first sparked the debate over the definition of a planet, which led to Pluto being demoted to "dwarf planet" along with Eris.

10 things you might not know about Eris:

https://topicaltens.blogspot.com/2015/01/5th-january-dwarf-planet-eris.html

Cool images and scientific speculation of what we can currently determine of the other side of Pluto (only seen in low resolution and not captured during the actual flyby).

https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-020-02082-1/index.html

Phil Plait gives us a look at how the other side of Pluto looks like.

"In a recently published paper, the planetary scientists on the New Horizons team described these images and what they may be saying about the semi-frozen rock-and-ice world at the edge of the solar system."

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/plutos-far-side-exploring-the-backside-of-a-tiny-iceworld

@evilscientistca