Pluto's Endless Mysteries

by Dylan
(Wisconsin, Illinois)

First off, "The Plutonian Surge" is an excellent name from a story!

Secondly, It seems Pluto is mysterious even on the internet. I don't know what could have caused the surge, I can only offer guesses. The first photos of Pluto are still fresh; perhaps that has something to do with it. Or perhaps those photos spawned a mob of Pluto fans who've just discovered the site?

The Pluto-Charon system deserves more love, anyways. It's the only binary world system we've ever observed; that's got to be worth something!

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Jun 24, 2016
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starstarstarstarstar 		Surge from the Plutonian depths
by: Zendexor

Who knows? The surge really was remarkable; there are so many pages on the site now that one single page is doing well if it gets 3 views in a day; 6 is really good; yet Pluto had 28 views on the 20th of June, and 25 views on the 22nd. Unheard-of - except, I have to say, that on 26th May something similar happened to the Clark Ashton Smith page (24 views), doubtless a consequence of the popularity of "The Archives of The Moon".

As you point out, the images from the real Pluto are still fresh. Also from the real Charon. And indeed Pluto-Charon is the only binary world system we've observed, and the only one (apart from a few small binary asteroids) that we know of at all. I'm assuming the definition of a binary world is one in which the common centre of gravity of the two worlds is somewhere in the space between them, rather than (as with the Earth-Moon system) somewhere inside the larger body. Charon is about half the diameter of Pluto and must be a tremendous sight in the Plutonian sky.

The images from the New Horizons probe are truly amazing. I get a bit bored with worlds that are just covered with craters; I had feared Pluto might be like that and was thrilled and surprised to see its artistic, stunning landscapes, worthy of something out of Edmond Hamilton.

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