Could Pluto have a ring system?

<QUOTE>Could Pluto have a ring system?</QUOTE>

It's possible.

However, as you might expect, everything we have in place is simply too far away to notice it. We'll have to wait until 2015 when New Horizons gets there.

<QUOTE>Let's just hope it doesn't get smashed to smithereens by some rogue asteroid.</QUOTE>

Asteroids? Very unlikely. Even in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the average distance between asteroids is about 1000 km.

That being said, New Horizons does take pictures of Pluto regularly to try find out unexpected obstacles and course-correct ahead of time, if necessary, to avoid such obstacles. If there is a ring system around Pluto, it's preferable to steer away from it (passing between gaps in the ring, as it happened with Cassini for example).

-- EDIT --

Based on IOWA MIKE's links, there's this preprint from 2011: http://arxiv.org/abs/1108.0712v1 (the page with the latest version of the preprint, v2, seems to be kaput). Click on the link "PDF" on the right side of the page.

Size is an important element; availability of raw materials to form and/or maintain rings is another. Jupiter and Saturn have plenty of satellites, are near a supply of asteroids/comets and have very distant Roche limits (the distance at which normal matter would be stretched apart as fast as it could try to form a single body under its own gravity). Rings materials are "short-lived" on the astronomical time-scale; unless you have shepherding satellites and a supply of raw material, they tend to "run down" after a while. If the Giant Impact Theory is a correct explanation for the formation of our Moon, then Earth must have had an impressive ring for quite some time (compared to our human lifetime -- short on the astronomical scale); then some of it "fell" onto the newly formed Moon and some fell back to Earth. Mercury and Venus do not have a good supply of materials AND any ring system would quickly be disrupted by the Sun's tidal effect. Mars's Roche limit is very close in: if it had a ring system, it would be very small and very close to the planet (therefore, would not live very long).

Possibly, but not probable. The discovery of Neptune'[s ring system from a ground-based telescope was one of the serendipitous "accidental" discoveries that sometimes happen in science. One the rings occluded a star for a few minutes while the telescope was already tracking Neptune. Hubble observes Pluto on a rotating basis, so if there IS a ring system, one of the rings would have to occult a star long enough for Hubble to record the occlusion while it was scanning the field of view . Pluto and Charon just don't have the mass to create the big "dip" in the space-time continuum like the Jovian planets do with their bigger gravitational fields."

According to the latest theoretical calculations, the dwarf planet Pluto should have a dust ring companion revolving around it. Scientists base their proposal on a computer model that analyzes the object's behavior in orbit. We will have to see if a ring system is discovered if so the New Horizon's mission may need to implement the SHABOT (Safe Haven Bail Out Trajectory) plan.

Its possible, but it appears that rings only form around the larger planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune).

There are no rings around the smaller terrestrial planets, and its not likely there are rings around Pluto.

Good questions and as you say, we will hopefully find some answers in 2015. Sure hope you are wrong about that asteroid (or undiscovered moon?)