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SCIENCESaturday 12 September
Newest Pluto pictures show jumbled mountains, possible dunes
MARCIA DUNN This July 14, 2015, photo provided by NASA shows a 220-mile thin atmosphere. with Pluto on July 14, fol-
AP Aerospace Writer (350-kilometer) wide view of Pluto taken from NASA’s New “Either Pluto had a thicker lowing a journey from
CAPE CANAVERAL, Flori- Horizons spacecraft. atmosphere in the past, or Cape Canaveral, Florida,
da (AP) — The spigot has some process we haven’t spanning 3 billion miles
opened again, and Pluto Associated Press figured out is at work. It’s a (4.8 billion kilometers) and
pictures are pouring in head-scratcher,” McKin- 9½ years. As of Friday, the
once more from NASA’s geologist, William McKin- ridges are, in fact, dunes, non said in a written state- spacecraft was 44 million
New Horizons spacecraft. non of Washington Univer- that would be “com- ment. miles (71 million kilome-
These newest snapshots sity in St. Louis, said if the pletely wild” given Pluto’s The jumble of mountains, ters) past Pluto.
reveal an even more di- on the other hand, may So much data were col-
verse landscape than be huge blocks of ice lected during the Pluto
scientists imagined be- floating in a softer, vast flyby that it will take until
fore New Horizons swept deposit of frozen nitrogen. next fall to retrieve it all
past Pluto in July, becom- After several weeks of col- here on Earth. The space-
ing the first spacecraft to lecting engineering data craft is operated from the
ever visit the distant dwarf from New Horizons, scien- Johns Hopkins University
planet. tists started getting fresh Applied Physics Labora-
“If an artist had painted Pluto pictures last week- tory in Laurel, Maryland,
this Pluto before our flyby, end. The latest images which also designed and
I probably would have were released Thursday. built it.
called it over the top — Besides geologic features, New Horizons’ next target,
but that’s what is actually the images show that the pending formal approval
there,” said Alan Stern, atmospheric haze sur- by NASA, will be a much
New Horizons’ principal rounding Pluto has mul- smaller object that orbits
scientist from Southwest tiple layers. What’s more, 1 billion miles (1.6 billion
Research Institute in Boul- the haze crates a twilight kilometers)beyond Pluto.
der, Colorado. effect that enables New It, too, lies in the so-called
In one picture, dark an- Horizons to study places Kuiper Belt, a frigid twilight
cient craters border much on the night side that sci- zone on the outskirts of
younger icy plains. Dark entists never expected to our solar system. Following
ridges also are visible that see. a set of maneuvers, New
some scientists speculate Monday marks two Horizons would reach PT1
might be dunes. months from New Hori- — short for Potential Tar-
One outer solar-system zons’ close encounter get 1 — in 2019.q
Study: Caffeine trade
thrived in ancient America
In this Sept. 1, 2015 photo, University of New Mexico Led by University of New the South. and political events. Sci-
anthropology professor Patricia Crown poses for a photo in her Mexico anthropology pro- Researchers found caf- entists believe the drinks
office on the campus in Albuquerque, N.M. fessor Patricia Crown, the feine on shards from jars, were largely consumed by
study says the trade lasted bowls, and pitchers locat- the elite or a noble class
Associated Press for around 700 years, likely ed at archaeological sites because the plant for the
driven by a pre-Hispanic throughout present-day drinks had to go through
RUSSELL CONTRERAS with ancient civilizations caffeine addiction. New Mexico, Arizona and an intricate trade route.
Associated Press trading holly and cacao- Previous studies found trac- Colorado, where neither “For people who had a diet
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexi- based chocolate bever- es of cacao-based choco- holly nor cacao grows. consisting of corn, bean
co (AP) — More than 1,000 ages between what is now late beverages in parts of “The fact we have found and squash, the drinks pro-
years before coffeehouse modern-day Mexico, the the Southwest but this new traces of caffeine that are vided a kick,” Crown said.
chains, caffeine was an in- Southwest and the South, study confirms their popu- 1,000 years old is exciting,” It’s unclear if people in the
ternational market mover, according to a new study. larity and adds the holly Crown said. “As new tech- Southwest traveled down
drink that before the study nology develops, we can to Mexico or if the plants
was not known to be con- discover things about the were obtained through
sumed in the Southwest, past like this using objects village-to-village trade
Crown said. we already have in muse- routes.
Holly, which was used to ums.” The study is published in the
make a caffeinated tea, Crown said the caffeine Proceedings of the Nation-
was grown in what is now likely was used in rituals al Academy of Sciences.q
