Beyond the New Horizon: The Future of Pluto

TL;DR

This paper analyzes Pluto's historical mass measurements, suggesting it has decreased over time and predicting future changes, with implications for its physical state and the potential for future observations to clarify its mass evolution.

Contribution

It provides a new assessment of Pluto's mass history, fitting models to past data and predicting future mass trends based on observational data.

Findings

Pluto's mass has decreased over the last century.

Models fit to historical data suggest ongoing mass change.

Future observations will clarify whether Pluto's mass will increase or decrease.

Abstract

Since its discovery in 1930, Pluto's mass has been a value that has repeatedly been calculated. Additionally, the search for Planet X prior to Pluto's discovery results in mass calculations that date back several decades earlier. Over its observed history, the mass of Pluto has consistently decreased. We reassess earlier predictions of Pluto's fate, and rule out the hypothesis that Pluto's mass has been constant over the last century. We are able to fit linear and quadratic equations to Pluto's mass as a function of both time and distance. The observations that will be made by New Horizons will help to determine if we can expect Pluto to continue to shrink until it has negative mass, or if it will begin to increase in mass again.