NationStates Jolt Archive

Pluto is my favorite planet (obviously), and in my Celestia program, made a few changes to it. I terraformed it. In real life, I believe that this is ENTIRELY possible. The only problem is, with such a low gravitational pull, how do I know that all the water won't fly off into space, or some other stuff happening. Also, can it be terraformed in the first place? (I think so, obviously.)

http://img148.exs.cx/img148/5627/terraformedplutoscreenshot0lf.png

How can you give it anything even resembling a temperate climate?

We Would All Die Before We Got There!

Give Up Your Futile Attempts!

Go To Sleep!

Not possible. We could terraform it, even install artificial gravity generators, but the fact that it has almost no sunlight would prevent the terraformation from being successful.

IT's possible but you would need an artificial source of heat, which wouldn't be too difficult but you would need alot of energy for it. Which in turn makes it's own problems.

ok you try it tell me how it goes.

Pluto is my favorite planet (obviously), and in my Celestia program, made a few changes to it. I terraformed it. In real life, I believe that this is ENTIRELY possible. The only problem is, with such a low gravitational pull, how do I know that all the water won't fly off into space, or some other stuff happening. Also, can it be terraformed in the first place? (I think so, obviously.)

http://img93.exs.cx/img93/2641/TerraformedPlutov4.png


Look up the mass of pluto. Calculate the escape velocity.

Now figure out the average speed of a water molcule on pluto, given it's average surface temp.

If the average veolcity is < the escape velocity, then you can be fairly sure that it won't fly off into space.

What game is that from?

Look up the mass of pluto. Calculate the escape velocity.

Now figure out the average speed of a water molcule on pluto, given it's average surface temp.

If the average veolcity is < the escape velocity, then you can be fairly sure that it won't fly off into space.
I was talking about if pluto was warm enough to melt the water ice.

Gee man, I don't know...Wouldn't it need an iron/knickle core to have sufficient gravity to retain the atmosphere - and how can the oxygen and nitrogen be unfrozen to provide the atmosphere in the first place? Geothermal venting? But we don't know if there's any plate tectonics...in fact, there's really very little known.

I don't honestly think Pluto can be remade to appear quite as you've depicted in your image, thoughtful as it may be. I think the atmosphere would alternately fly off or freeze into a liquid medium.

did you people ever hear that scientists declassified it, and it is now only known as a large, blue rock?

What game is that from?
I just added it to my sig. Click on the "Celestia" link.

I thought I read somewhere that they are basically calling it a giant icecube.

If so Teraforming is impossible. Espeically, when you consider the distance from the sun, etc.....

ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE WITH ENOUGH CHEESE!!!

Okay, first you need to take care of the gravitational problem, so you speed up Plutos rotation, right?

Next, light and heat. Construct a massive solar gathering and intensification station or some other construct replicating a source of sunlight and evenly beam it across one half of Pluto.

Then figure out how to get there a hell of a lot faster than we can now.

Taa-daa! Pluto is ready for terraforming. Mind you, I don't know a damn thing about any of this. But what the hell. That's the great thing about the NS General Forum. You can pull shit our of your ass all night long. Hoo-ray Nation States!

I was talking about if pluto was warm enough to melt the water ice.

Well then you know that the temp is going to be at least arounf 273k. Use that and see how close it is. Then you can tell if it will fly off into space. I very much doubt it.

no, you need 9 billion double A batteries and really, really big screwdriver. then you can live there.

It can't be terraformed without some form of artificial gravity. It's too small to hold an atmosphere with its gravity. Now, stick a miniature black hold in the center; THEN we'll talk.

It can't be terraformed without some form of artificial gravity. It's too small to hold an atmosphere with its gravity. Now, stick a miniature black hold in the center; THEN we'll talk.

Has anyone actually bothered to work that out yet?

It can't be terraformed without some form of artificial gravity. It's too small to hold an atmosphere with its gravity. Now, stick a miniature black hold in the center; THEN we'll talk.

Wouldn't it be hard for us to talk with a 'miniature' black hole anywhere in our solar system? I mean, being reduced to a particle-wide strand of spaghetti doesn't do wonders for interpersonal communications, after all...

face it, the only thing pluto is good for is a giant celestial glass of water.

face it, the only thing pluto is good for is a giant celestial glass of water.

What, not a giant glass of booze? I'd heard many nebulae are composed of...alcohol. All that's missing is a martini glass

Has anyone actually bothered to work that out yet?


What are we suipposed to be? Fucking scientists? Hell no! We just come up with the crackpot ideas. Let some egghead from MIT or JPL figure out the hard shit!

face it, the only thing pluto is good for is a giant celestial glass of water.
*Gasp*

How dare you insult the only god, other than mother nature, I worship! :D

What, not a giant glass of booze? I'd heard many nebulae are composed of...alcohol. All that's missing is a martini glass

ya, the milky way is actually baileys irish cream!

...mmm...bailey's...

damn i need a drink now... anybody got shnopps?

and yes irish cream rox your sox

Pluto cant be terraformed because of its distance from earth, the surface temperature is around -450degrees. There also wouldn't be enough gravity to prevent the loss of atmosphere into space

What are we suipposed to be? Fucking scientists? Hell no! We just come up with the crackpot ideas. Let some egghead from MIT or JPL figure out the hard shit!

It's not that hard. I just can't be bothered to figure it out.

Edit: What I mean is that it is a Thermo I type question, but I can't be assed to look the shit up.

I just added it to my sig. Click on the "Celestia" link.

Okay you rock, I just DLed the game, went the Motherload picked up NX-01..now I'm gonna go be a dork and have fun.

It's not that hard. I just can't be bothered to figure it out.

Edit: What I mean is that it is a Thermo I type question, but I can't be assed to look the shit up.


LOL! I'm with you. There're much more important things in life - like posting on NS all night!

Wouldn't it be hard for us to talk with a 'miniature' black hole anywhere in our solar system? I mean, being reduced to a particle-wide strand of spaghetti doesn't do wonders for interpersonal communications, after all...

Um, hello? I said MINIATURE. As in, really, really small. Big enough to create 1G of gravity on the surface of Pluto, but no larger than that. I have no idea how big that'd be; football size, perhaps? It'd probably be expensive to maintain (gotta feed it without making it too big), but we're talking about Pluto here.

Also, said black hole may also produce enough heat to thaw water. The light thing would still be an issue, but you could use another mini-black-hole even further away; that'd give off light as well as heat, and act as a miniature sun. Alternatively, you could use some sort of uber-lens to focus the light from the far-away sun.

Man, I feel a sci-fi novel coming on...

Okay you rock, I just DLed the game, went the Motherload picked up NX-01..now I'm gonna go be a dork and have fun.
Did you DL my TF pluto addon? It's in the "fictional worlds" section. You might wanna wait a bit, because I sent an upgrade and I'm still waiting for them to post it. (Don't hold your breath, though. They upgrade about once a month.)

It might help things if an astronomer actually enters this thread, such as myself.
Okay, I don't think that Pluto can be successfully terraformed, because of everything that would be needed to make it livable. Artificial gravity, heating, enclosed atmosphere and hydrosphere, radiation protection... in total, it doesn't make much sense to try it.
The atmosphere and hydrosphere would have to be enclosed, because Pluto's gravity is so low. Very little water would stay on the planet, and the same goes for oxygen and nitrogen. Unfortunately, there is a slight problem with putting artificial gravity in. What would happen with Charon? Will it keep orbiting, crash into Pluto, or slingshot away?
As for the idea of putting a tiny black hole in Pluto... Do that, and you will end up with NO PLUTO. 'Feeding' a black hole makes it bigger, not a good idea if you want a solid surface. You could even upset the orbits of many Kuiper Belt Objects, making them crash into the planets or Sun or leave the solar system.

Eh... why need radiaton protection, considering how FAR the planet is from the sun?

Eh... why need radiaton protection, considering how FAR the planet is from the sun?

No atmosphere.

As for the idea of putting a tiny black hole in Pluto... Do that, and you will end up with NO PLUTO. 'Feeding' a black hole makes it bigger, not a good idea if you want a solid surface. You could even upset the orbits of many Kuiper Belt Objects, making them crash into the planets or Sun or leave the solar system.

I was thinking of a really big cavern in the middle of the planetoid, big enough that the rock isn't sucked into the event horizon. And you have to feed the black hole a little; otherwise it'd collapse on itself. And again, I'm proposing a black hole just large enough for 1G gravity on the surface of the planet; that would affect the Kuiper Belt far less than the Earth's gravity influences the asteroid belt.

Black holes are not an all-or-nothing proposition. If you can make one small enough and keep it stable, it would serve as a tiny fake-gravity generator, with less of an effect beyond Pluto's surface than the Earth's gravity. It wouldn't necessarily have to become a monstrous vortex of doom... unless it's a sci-fi movie or novel. Then it does.

I was thinking of a really big cavern in the middle of the planetoid, big enough that the rock isn't sucked into the event horizon. And you have to feed the black hole a little; otherwise it'd collapse on itself. And again, I'm proposing a black hole just large enough for 1G gravity on the surface of the planet; that would affect the Kuiper Belt far less than the Earth's gravity influences the asteroid belt.

Black holes are not an all-or-nothing proposition. If you can make one small enough and keep it stable, it would serve as a tiny fake-gravity generator, with less of an effect beyond Pluto's surface than the Earth's gravity. It wouldn't necessarily have to become a monstrous vortex of doom... unless it's a sci-fi movie or novel. Then it does.


Ah, but you couldn't hav a solid sphere around it. The orbit would be unstable. Eventually pluto would touch the event horizon.

Radiation protection is needed because, while there isn't so much from the Sun, there is more cosmic radiation, which is very nasty, more so than UV.

It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to keep the planet from collapsing into the black hole because the core would have been hollowed out to make room.

Even if Pluto's surface had a gravitational pull of 1g, that's a whole lot more than what Charon is feeling right now from Pluto, but it's staying in orbit. Increase the attractive force, and you'll change the orbit.

It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to keep the planet from collapsing into the black hole because the core would have been hollowed out to make room.


As I said. Even if you hollowed out the core, pluto would still collapse into the black hole. It's and unstable arrangement.

NOTE: I replaced the screenshot on the first page with a more recent screenshot.

We're missing the bigger issue here guys. Wouldn't the Plutonians be slightly angry of we came along and started warming up the planet and putting mini black hole here and there.

Why bother with Pluto, why not get Luna, or Mars or something. They're much closer, besides, Mars already had icecaps, and an atmosphere that if it was not so thin, would be breathable.

Why bother with Pluto, why not get Luna, or Mars or something. They're much closer, besides, Mars already had icecaps, and an atmosphere that if it was not so thin, would be breathable.
I actually agree with that. Mars first, THEN Pluto (after we terraform Luna, titan, etc... :D ).

Okay, I'm not going to even touch on the sheer impossibility of making a Black Hole 'miniature', let alone tangible. You'd be far better off using a supercompressed sphere of heavy particles, like Nickel and Lead, and that other lovely stuff in our core. Y'see, gravity isn't that hard to make. You ever watch two drops of water REALLY close to each other? If they slide just close enough, one is sucked right into the the other. Everything in the universe exhibits gravity that is directly proportional to it's mass (not volume, so as long as it's dense enough, you could use a marble. But good luck picking THAT up...).
Now then, moving along to other points. Let's say you make Pluto a greater gravitational power in the Sol (not solar, look up the Sun's name if you want to call that a typo) system. Do you have any idea how dangerous that would be? Everything in the universe is pulling on everything else, but mass and space are the variables that determine the force- so we are only truly affected by objects in our system. This extra gravity would accelerate Pluto's growth, as more chunks of matter from the Oort cloud smack into it, thus increasing it's mass until it begins to have a significant effect on Neptune, and that's where the fun begins.
Hoo boy. As Neptune is pulled toward Pluto, and Pluto toward Neptune (keep in mind, this process is going take a while), the new gravitational statistics distort the orbit of Uranus, just enough that this causes an aggregate disruption until it hits Jupiter. Now, we are very, VERY lucky. Jupiter is a large planet, and was almost, ALMOST large enough to reach critical mass and collapse into a star, which would have, to put it bluntly, sucked in all of the matter that composes our system, leaving the Sol system a plain-jane Binary Star system- Luckily, that didn't happen. With Jupiter's orbit potentially cataclysmically disrupted, it could move into a position in which it and Saturn pull closer, and now all of the planets which have begun to fly out of our solar system toward the ever-growing Neptune-Pluto gravibody, they fishtail around back towards the now growing Jupiter-Saturn body. What I'm basically building to is Jupiter and all of these lovely planets eventually colliding, merging, collapsing, and erupting as a new star. Enjoy.

It shouldn't be terraformed. It should be re-zoned as a galactic beer cooler.

Close, but no cigar. :)

Jupiter needs to be 80 times more massive than it is to be a star, and the other 3 gas planets are WAY not enough to ignite a new star. One could try detonating a large h-bomb in jupiter-saturn-uranus-neptune's atmosphere, but there would be so much mass ejected as to cause mass extinctions on Earth.

it all comes down to heat.

no jupiters moonds you could do it. float dsks in the atmospere and burn away the H3. Direct lite to a moon, and viola.

Pluto that cant be done. to bad.

what about Mars first?
go from the easierst to the hardest.

[QUOTE=Hirilytha] Y'see, gravity isn't that hard to make. You ever watch two drops of water REALLY close to each other? If they slide just close enough, one is sucked right into the the other. QUOTE]

Dude, that's not gravity. The gravity from two drops of water is so small that it will only affect one or two air molecules. The phenomenon you described is caused by the fact the water is a polar molecule- that is, different parts of it have different charges. Thus, the molecules in both drops will flip so that the opposite charges are facing each other and move toward each other.

The rest of your post is based on this vast and gross overestimation of gravity.

And a black hole IS a ball of hyper-dense material.