Just years ago, scientists deemed Pluto so irrelevant, they reclassified it as a “dwarf planet.” Today, those same scientists are hailing it as the biggest thing in the solar system.
In addition to soaring ice mountains, Pluto’s mixed bag of terrains includes smooth plains that are crisscrossed by enigmatic troughs, photographs from NSAS’s New Horizons mission show.
‘When I saw this image for the first time, I decided I was going to call it not-easy-to-explain terrain,’ said Jeffrey Moore, the leader of the geology, geophysics and imaging team for New Horizons, which visited Pluto this week.
It has been an ecstatic few days for the scientists, who are puzzling over features they never expected.
(New York Times, July 17, 2015)
More to the point, just months ago, scientists were waxing ecstatic about another galactic feat. I sounded a curious, cautionary and cynical note back then in “Rosetta’s Comet Mission: the Robot Has Landed. Great. Now What?” November 13, 2014. Today, that note might resonate with you.
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Given their jubilation (with high-fiving, backslapping, and hugging all around), you’d think they had in fact discovered signs of life out there … somewhere.
But I, for one, remember all too well the jubilation that attended, not just some robotic probe, but man landing on the Moon. And I am hard-pressed to cite ways in which that landing has lived up to the hype and hope it inspired. Not to mention that I’m still recovering from all of the disillusionment man’s robotic missions to Mars caused…
I just think that, given the feat of landing a man on the Moon almost 50 years ago, scientists would do well to be a little more humble about feats that amount to little more than high-wire, robotic acts in space. Especially if those feats, in and of themselves, do little to advance man’s ongoing quest to either discover signs of other life in the universe, or find out more about the origins of our planet … ourselves.
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Accordingly, after they finish congratulating themselves … again, I urge these scientists to tell us what great leap for mankind these images New Horizons is now beaming back from Pluto represents. After all, I’m still waiting for these same scientists to tell us what great leap for mankind similar images (and surface samples) Pathfinder, Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, and Rosetta beamed back over the years from Mars represented.
And, while they’re at it, they might also tell us what all their fuss last November, after landing the Rosetta spacecraft on some comet, was all about….
Again, color me cynical; but I suspect Pluto the dog will prove more significant in the history of mankind than Pluto the planet.
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