Pluto and Charon as templates for other large Trans-Neptunian objects
Abstract
Exotic landforms are created on Pluto through the action of highly volatile surface materials that can be mobilized by the small amounts of energy available from sunlight and from the decay of radioactive isotopes in Pluto's core. Although Charon is too small to have retained the volatiles that enable Pluto's continuing activity, it too was geologically active in the past. The processes that enable activity at the extremely cold temperatures prevalent on small bodies far from the Sun offer lessons for what sorts of processes might once have shaped, or even still be modifying the surfaces of other large, as-yet unexplored trans-neptunian bodies.
- Publication:
-
The Trans-Neptunian Solar System
- Pub Date:
- 2020
- DOI:
- 10.1016/B978-0-12-816490-7.00013-8
- Bibcode:
- 2020tnss.book..291G