Pluto and Charon are a binary system revolving around a point outside Pluto's circumference.
Knowing that IO, a Jovian moon is the most volcanically active body in our solar system because of tidal forces.

On Pluto there is evidence of lava like flows (water ice) where cratering has been resurfaced in the Tombaugh region and is now relatively smooth.
The only explanation I've heard to explain this is radioactive decay or some form of internal energy left over from the collision that created Pluto.

Has anyone scientifically explored the possibility that Pluto and Charon cause tidal forces on Pluto that generate enough heat to melt the rock hard ice like Jupiter does to the rock on IO.
I noticed as best I could from the images that Charon appears to be on the opposite side of Pluto relative to the Tombaugh region. This smooth patch may be the result of Charon being where it is and the tidal forces caused by Charon may be the heat source.

Anyone know anything about this?

Has anyone scientifically explored the possibility that Pluto and Charon cause tidal forces on Pluto that generate enough heat to melt the rock hard ice

My friend, Google, helped me find this: "Tidal heating, geological and atmospheric engine on Pluto" (link). I do not know if this is regarded seriously by planetary scientists; maybe friend ADS could help?

Is Google your friend too?

like Jupiter does to the rock on IO

That cannot happen. Here's an explanation from the above source (you'll find essentially the same explanation in many sources); Io's orbit is nothing like that of Charon:

Pluto and its moon Charon have trapped rotation, i.e., both bodies show each other the same hemisphere. On the other hand the orbit of Charon is circular (and therefore so is Pluto’s orbit around their common center of mass (Buie et al., 2012). For these two conditions it is not expected that there is an exchange of energy, via tides, between the two bodies.

PolishPlanetPursuer

Thanks for the link, I realize there are volcanoes of ice and methane on Pluto, my question focuses more on, what is the source of heat to cause these volcanoes.
The most common thought is that it's residual heat left over from all the collisions of impacts on Pluto or a single collision that caused Pluto's moon Charon or some form of radioactive decay. I don't hear anyone suggesting it could be from tidal forces. Knowing that IO's (a Jupiter moon which is the most volcanically active planet in our solar system) geological activity is caused by tidal forces (its being stretched and pulled and kneaded like dough by it's orbit around Jupiter's gravitational influence). So my thought and question is why couldn't this be the same force causing the volcanic activity on Pluto.

Pluto's moon Charon is about half the size of Pluto and one eighth the mass it is also gravitationally locked to Pluto.
Since Charon is always facing the same side of Pluto and the Tombaugh Regio area is on the opposite side of Charon's tidal lock zone, it makes me believe that tidal forces are at play here, not just left over heat from a collision or collision's.

Another moon of Jupiter, Europa is also heated by Europa's elipticall orbit. The ice is being pulled apart and put back together creating heat from friction. Pluto's heat could be caused by some internal friction?

Hi @PolishPlanetPursuer,

You need a big field-of-view and/or lots of dedicated time. JWST has too small a field-of-view and will be doing many different types of observations. There are limits on planets beyond Neptune from the WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) spacecraft, but they don't rule out the mass of a planet predicted for this planet in the Baygin & Brown (2016) paper. They rule out Jupiter and Saturn-sized bodies. You can find the paper here.

Cheers,

~Meg

That's the title of a thread in Comet Hunters Talk, started last week by Meg Schwamb:

Not quite directly related but If you're an earlier riser you'll have a chance to see Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus and Mercury in the morning sky just before sunrise. I thought some of the Comet Hunters might be interested. Peak time is around this week to look. More details here in a blog post I wrote for Planet Four.

Surely of general interest, not just to CH and P4; there must be lots of early risers, and quite a few who'd be thrilled to see all five of the planets known since even before historical records began.

Although the best time may have passed, sorta, I can confirm that, today, both Mercury and Venus were still visible before dawn, albeit Venus is closer to the horizon (Mercury has just passed its greatest elongation, I think). Saturn and Antares - the brightest star in Scorpio - make a nice (wide) pair in the pre-dawn sky.

I found out Mike Brown's opinion on how Planet 9 formed.
Like my theory (and many other people's theories), he suggested that Planet 9 was formed in the inner KB and was ejected by Jupiter or Saturn.

Jupiter and Saturn orbit too closely to have ejected Nine, even taking into account gravitational perturbations. My personal analysis is that Nine is a rock/ice world that formed around ~200 AU from what is missing from the Kuiper Belt; Then, gravitational perturbations from stars in the Sun's birth cluster moved its orbit outward onto the eccentric orbit it has today.

Here are two new papers, whose authors are identical.:

Making Planet Nine: Pebble Accretion at 250--750 AU in a Gravitationally Unstable Ring
Authors: Scott J. Kenyon, Benjamin C. Bromley
(Submitted on 25 Mar 2016)
http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.08008

Making Planet Nine: A Scattered Giant in the Outer Solar System
Authors: Benjamin C. Bromley, Scott J. Kenyon

Correlations in the orbits of several minor planets in the outer solar system suggest the presence of a remote, massive Planet Nine. With at least ten times the mass of the Earth and a perihelion well beyond 100 AU, Planet Nine poses a challenge to planet formation theory. Here we expand on a scenario in which the planet formed closer to the Sun and was gravitationally scattered by Jupiter or Saturn onto a very eccentric orbit in an extended gaseous disk. Dynamical friction with the gas then allowed the planet to settle in the outer solar system. We explore this possibility with a set of numerical simulations. Depending on how the gas disk evolves, scattered super-Earths or small gas giants settle on a range of orbits, with perihelion distances as large as 300 AU. Massive disks that clear from the inside out on million-year time scales yield orbits that allow a super-Earth or gas giant to shepherd the minor planets as observed. A massive planet can achieve a similar orbit in a persistent, low-mass disk over the lifetime of the solar system.

(Submitted on 25 Mar 2016)
http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.08010

Found this on Reddit this morning and it amused me.

One of these is Jupiter's moon Europa. The rest are frying pans.

Can you tell?