melt

Reader enragedparrot asks the rather sensible question, which appears to have been somewhat neglected in the vast war of words of 2035, 2350, and quite what is the source for what: if 2035 is badly wrong, what is the right date? The answer, of course, is that I don't know. But I may be able to tell you something useful along the way. If you've seen a better answer, please point me at it. [Dragged from the comments: http://web.hwr.arizona.edu/~gleonard/2009Dec-FallAGU-Soot-PressConference-Backgrounder-Kargel.pdf is excellent -W] So (forgive me, to clear more wrong stuff out of the way) 2035 is…

Sure, astronomers might not call it a planet anymore, but every schoolchild knows how badass Pluto really is. It's got a giant moon, Charon, and two smaller ones, Hydra and Nix. In addition to being colder than ice with an average temperature of 44 Kelvin (that's colder than liquid nitrogen), I'm here to bring you the news that despite the fact that it's so cold and so far from the Sun, Pluto has been melting! Since its discovery by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, astronomers have been fascinated with Pluto, making very careful observations of it, trying to learn more about this bizarre, icy sphere…