Pluto flashes its unusual pits

NASA's New Horizons mission has returned an intriguing photo of Pluto's Sputnik Planum plains, showing an "enigmatic cellular pattern" and "unusual clusters of small pits and troughs". The News Horizons image of the Sputnik Planum Cellular patterns, pits and troughs on Pluto's Sputnik Planum. Bigger version here Scientists …

[Arthur the cat]

Aligned pits and troughs? It's a DVD.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Aligned pits and troughs? It's a DVD."

Its a digital message from Aliens! It'll probably read "Its an offence to decode this copyrighted material without express permission from General Zog at Galactic Command. You civilisation is now forfeit and your planet will be confiscated and sold to pay the fine."

[BlartVersenwaldIII]

I don't fancy General Zog's chances against Disney's lawyers.

[Mpeler]

It's the pits

It's the EULA for Windows 10.1 - the only full copy.....

Or,

It's the last loo (aka Pit Stop) for 4.2 light years.....

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a DVD

You should see the unit that plays it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It's a DVD

Do you need a pulsar beam to read it?

[Graham Marsden]

Re: It's a DVD

> You should see the unit that plays it!

It's obvious, we have to build the Sun Beam from Doc Smith's Lensman books (which concentrates the sun's output into a single concentrated beam), then we'll be able to read it!

(Or we fry Pluto, I'm not sure...)

[Grikath]

Any odds that after analsys and decoding it will produce the Emperors' Theme?

[Voland's right hand]

Shuddering

We shudder to think what the potential implications for humanity might be were Pluto weird in a bad way.

We can start with Lovecraft : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuggoth

Or we can go to something even weirder: "The Illegal Planet" - https://fantlab.ru/work58537

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Shuddering

O well, it's still named after the god of inferi, and may not be happy to know it was demoted to a "dwarf"... hope New Horizon didn't let him know....

[g e]

Re: Shuddering

Fhtagn Fhtagn, Yuggoth and so forth

I for one will NOT be welcoming our tentacle-faced overlords

[Pascal Monett]

Ooh, you'll be going to the pits for sure when they get here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Womp rats

"I used to bull's-eye womp rats in my T-16 back home. They're not much bigger than two meters."

―Luke Skywalker

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Womp rats

These are more than 250m large, we knew Skywalker was making it up....

[RockBurner]

Looks more like meteorite debris on a snowfield to me.....

[Stoneshop]

Pancake batter

I doubt that meteorite debris would be as regular sized as these pits. To me it looks like the dimples in a pancake when you're baking them and they're halfway done.

[Voland's right hand]

Re: Pancake batter

I doubt that meteorite debris would be as regular sized as these pits.

In the mess hall of the Start Destroyer Vindicator, in a galaxy far, far away.

Appalling performance from the 1st, 3rd and 7th turrets gunnery squads. You are all assigned to garbage collector maintenance for the next week. You are lucky that Lord Vader wasn't around to witness the spread of your volleys, he is nowhere as forgiving as I am.

Stop grumbling and say thank you, I am doing you a favor. If that was a Mon Calamari cruiser and not a target practice range in some obscure system's Coupier belt we would all be dead by now.

[dotdavid]

Re: Pancake batter

"some obscure system's Coupier belt"

Calling it a croupier belt sounds like a gamble to me.

[Kingston Black]

Could they be...

Footprints?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Could they be...

Yeah, I thought the local kids have been out playing in the (nitrogen) snow.

[Fink-Nottle]

Re: Could they be...

Wormsign

[Your alien overlord - fear me]

"the absence of impact craters is evidence of the area's geographical youth, NASA notes."

However, on closer inspection Pluto is a planet. Er, I mean Pluto has been shot-gunned by a high altitude meteor burst.

[Jimmy2Cows]

Never mind the pits...

It's the lighthouse/beacon/antenna/point-singularity-projector looking thing in the upper left corner of the first image they should be interested in...

[Quip]

Re: Never mind the pits...

quite, and why are there so many footprints trudging toward it?

[Chris 239]

Re: Never mind the pits...

I can't believe I got this far down the comments before someone noticed the mobile cell tower! From the foot prints it has had a recent maintenance visit . Where can I sign up with Pluto Mobile? I might get a decent signal!

[spot]

pits?

They're not pits and troughs, they're trees.

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

Re: pits?

Seriously, they don't look like pits at all, morer like snowballs lying on the surface. And it's not the usual inversion illusion - before anyone tries to correct me... If you see the lighting on nearby cellular subsidence - it's opposite to that on the "dimples". And the sun light is coming from the upper right quadrant...

[Pascal Monett]

Re: the sun light is coming from the upper right quadrant

Unless they are not snowballs but actual pits, and the sunlight is coming from the left, which would explain why all pits are shaded on the left side and have a brightness on the right.

Plus there's the fact that NASA scientists are talking about pits. I tend to give them a bit of credence on interpreting interstellar pictures.

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

Re: the sun light is coming from the upper right quadrant

Please tell me what you think - the cells in the left part of the picture - are they ridged depressions or bumps surrounded by troughs?

Not a loaded question - just want to compare my own perception of the image with yours...

Thanks.

[imanidiot]

No need to be rude about it

It's not polite to point out someones cellulite you know...

[Triboolean]

Conway's game of life, planetary scale.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really just what happens when .....

God spits coffee out his nose, laughing at mankind and our collective stupidity. Or reading El Reg; whichever is most amusing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sand people?

[Swarthy]

Sand people?

Nah, they travel in single-file, to hide their numbers.