Pluto Strikes Back

Dr. Scott Kenyon

John Rayer
Dr. Kenyon started his talk with a little background into the history of
Pluto and some fun facts. Pluto was predicted in 1915 and was then
discovered in 1930. Pluto orbits 20o off axis of all of the other planets and
has a more elliptical orbit. Pluto also has 1/1000 the mass of the earth. 58
years later in 1978 scientists discovered Charon which has 10% of the mass
of Pluto. Pluto and Charon are binary planets separated by 17 Pluto radii. He
then described what he called the beginning of the end of Pluto.
In 1992, the first Kuiper belt object was discovered. After that, more
Kuiper belt objects were discovered including Eris. It is an object bigger than
Pluto, so that started a debate within the astrophysical community. They
asked whether they made Eris a new planet or if they took away Plutos title
of being a planet. The same debate apparently came up when the asteroid
belt was discovered. That debate resulted in deciding that the asteroids were
not planets because they were in a belt. Sadly, Plutos fate was the same and
lost its title as a planet in 2006. He ended his talk about Plutos demise by
describing some properties of Plutos satellites. All 4 have radii ranging from
10-50km and period ratios of about 3:4:5:6 relative to Charons period.
He used this as a transition into his research, which looks into the
formation of satellites. He stated that the origin of the satellites around Pluto
come from giant impacts. Satellites form in the debris of these impacts. He
used the analogy that planets form how dust bunnies form; they collect and
conglomerate. Rings begin to form around the impacted object and tides
expand the rings. The particles in the rings then begin to merge and form
satellites. Dr. Kenyon has dealt with a lot of simulations. He used them to
check impact frequency during the old solar system to see if the theory was
feasible, checked satellite formation time and checked satellite migration
time.
He ended his talk by describing his current research. Through his data,
he found that giant impacts are common. His simulation is essentially in two
parts. Theres a multiannulus coagulation code that follows anything of mass
less than 1017 grams. The other code is what he calls the N-body code which
follows all masses greater than 1017. In his code, there are algorithms to
describe what the outcomes of his experiments are. As objects get massive,
they move from the multiannulus code to the N-body code, where they follow
the position of the objects. He found that starting with smaller masses, you

end up with more satellites and for larger starting masses, you end up with
less satellites.