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Remains of Shattered Moon Found in Saturn's Rings

Posted by samzenpus on Wed Oct 24, 2007 10:43 PM
from the deathstar-wanted-for-questioning dept.
Space
Riding with Robots writes "Scientists have announced that they have used images from the robotic spacecraft Cassini to find moonlets embedded in Saturn's outer rings that are likely the remains of a larger moon that was shattered by an asteroid or comet. The team from the University of Colorado at Boulder that made the discovery has now posted details and pictures."
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Submission: Remains of Shattered Moon Found in Saturn's Rings by sighted (851500)
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  • That's no moon... (Score:5, Funny)

    by albeit unknown (136964) on Wednesday October 24 2007, @10:45PM (#21109203)
    It's a space station!
    • Worse... It's the Saturn Three [imdb.com] space station!

    • Re:That's no moon... (Score:5, Funny)

      by RuBLed (995686) on Wednesday October 24 2007, @11:58PM (#21109659)
      *Force Choke* [xkcd.com]

        • There's only been about 300 of them, but the author seems to be very much in tune with the /. crowd. There are only so many popular nerdy themes! I thoroughly recommend you browse through his archive - it's a very fun hour or so. Now, off to the String theory video thread to see if anyone's posted this [xkcd.com] yet.

          In an unrelated note, posters warning of possible raptor entry points have appeared in my building recently. (It's not my doing.)

    • Re:That's no moon... (Score:5, Funny)

      by gerf (532474) <edtgerf@gmail.com> on Thursday October 25 2007, @12:31AM (#21109815) Journal

      I blame this moon catastrophe on Global Warming.

      After all, before global warming, no one had ever in history seen a moon being decimated like this. I estimate that by 2050 half of the moons will be destroyed by meteors and death stars. The moons of some planets and pseudo planets may be spared, but most will be devastated. Their rubble will fall upon our metropolitan areas and million dollar summer homes, leaving us homeless and starving for food.

      We have all seen the horrific California wildfires this week. We've also seen the huge fireballs created by Schoemaker-Levy, which was near to this moon explosion. Obviously, something is going extremely wrong here!

      I propose that we blow these moons before they get blown themselves. We can then control how and where the remnants fall. To do this, we need an old song that's still catchy, a bunch of nukes and some hillbillies with mental and drug disorders.

      This program may very well hinder our economy. Because of this, any country that endeavors to be more advanced than any other country will be taxed into oblivion. We must have equality when taxing every single person for this project, after all. With enough hard work, we shall prevail over this imminent danger!

      • <nitpick>Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacted Jupiter, which while in cosmological terms might be nearby, is certainly not THAT close to Saturn!</nitpick>
    • Now, we all know it's a flippin' Monolith. Now to send a diabolical, untrustworthy computer to go investigate it.

      • Now to send a diabolical, untrustworthy computer to go investigate it.

        I nominate my new laptop; with the crapware and Vista, it qualifies.

  • Two earthworms in love?
  • I was disappointed when I found out that asteroid belts don't really look like the one we saw in Empire Strikes Back. It's been suggested that a planetary ring system would be a more likely candidate for closely-spaced celestial objects to fly around. Is that the case or would the closest object still be too tiny to resolved with the unaided eye?

    • Re:So, what do the rings look like from inside? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by sighted (851500) * on Wednesday October 24 2007, @11:05PM (#21109323) Homepage
      At least in some places, the ring particles are quite close together. Check out this illustration [seti.org]. The particles vary in size from dust grains to boulders as big as buildings. The wildest thing is that the rings are about 280,000 km wide, but less than one thick.

      • Re:So, what do the rings look like from inside? (Score:5, Informative)

        by sighted (851500) * on Wednesday October 24 2007, @11:11PM (#21109363) Homepage
        These Cassini images [nasa.gov] are interesting, too, and I think relate to the main story.

      • The wildest thing is that the rings are about 280,000 km wide, but less than one thick.
        Measured how? I understand the "thick" measurement but is "wide" from the core of the planet outward? Or all the way around the planet?

      • Re:So, what do the rings look like from inside? (Score:5, Funny)

        by ozphx (1061292) on Thursday October 25 2007, @02:22AM (#21110317) Homepage
        Its not that amazing. I'd hate to be the poor chump of a rock whose offset orbit intersects with eleventy billion tonnes of rocks orbiting at another angle ;)

        Put another way, if you are a couple of k's below the rings on one side, you'll be a couple of k's above on the other. Between those two points are all the other rocks that have been persuaded (pummeled) into not bucking the system. Also they are very big. And angry. And very willing to give you a bit of the newtons laws up the wazoo to persuade you to move with the herd again.

        You might also be eaten by a grue.

        • And very willing to give you a bit of the newtons laws up the wazoo to persuade you to move with the herd again.

          As I see it objects which have a little bit of out of plane momentum will transfer that component to the ring particles they collide with and drop into a lower orbit in the ring plane. Particles with a lot of out of plane momentum will fall right into Saturn. The out of plane momentum can't be turned into momentum in the ring plane.

          • You do realize that your sentences contradict each other, don't you? Your statement, "out of plane momentum can't be turned into momentum in the ring plane", applies to both positive and negative momentum. You can't use out of plane momentum to slow down nor speed up your orbit; this means that particles won't be falling into Saturn. (In-plane transfers are another matter, of course. Even so, you won't see cinematic meteor showers raining down over the planet.) See for more info. Be warned, there's a
    • the particles generally range from dust sized to very large objects much larger than a house and jusging from how much space the rings occupy, it should still be pretty empty in comparison to cluttered debris fields in movies.

  • Expected, but cool nevertheless (Score:5, Informative)

    by BadAnalogyGuy (945258) <BadAnalogyGuy@gmail.com> on Wednesday October 24 2007, @10:50PM (#21109247)
    The presence of planetary rings indicates a relatively recent astronomical event like this. Since Saturn has these pronounced rings, it cannot have been too long ago (in cosmic terms) that something like a moon or large planetoid was disintegrated in its vicinity. Eventually, the gravity of Saturn will suck the rings in and the cool ringed planet will become the ex-ringed planet.

    Neptune is another planet with rings which are far fainter, so it is likely that Neptune's lunar disintegration event happened to a much smaller object somewhat longer ago.

    Uranus, if it ever had rings, has swept clean its area. While not as pretty as a ringed planet, Uranus may pose less of a danger to probes since less damaging material encircles the planet.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by DJCacophony (832334)
      Eventually, the gravity of Saturn will suck the rings in

      The particles in Saturns rings are in no more of a decaying orbit around Saturn than the Moon is around Earth. The demise of the rings around Saturn will occur when they eventually dissipate into space over the course of tens of millions of years.
      • tens of millions of years
        You mean tens of billions I assume? And by dissipate you mean sublimate?
        • You mean tens of billions I assume?

          The PP is right, it's tens of millions, at least according to one of Isaac Asimov's science essays I read a while back.
          In astronomical timescales, structures of the magnitude of Saturn's rings exist for the equivalent of an eyeblink. In fact, it's not too much of a stretch to assume that each of the gas giants have gone through more than one of these "brief" events. Humanity is quite lucky to be around during one of them.

          Too bad it wasn't Jupiter with the large-scale str

    • Uranus, if it ever had rings, has swept clean its area. While not as pretty as a ringed planet, Uranus may pose less of a danger to probes since less damaging material encircles the planet.


      I bleach my ring you insensitive clod!

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Uranus may pose less of a danger to probes...."

      I'm quite sure that probes pose much more of a danger to Uranus.

    • Uranus, if it ever had rings, has swept clean its area.


      Uranus has rings right now...

      No, that's not a joke, I'm serious, it does [wikipedia.org].
      • Heh. I wasn't aware of that. That, btw, is a spectacular photo of Uranus. I wonder what those red splotchy things on Uranus are.

        What's particularly striking is how the outer rings are perpendicular to the rings right on Uranus. I can't imagine that they'd have been created as part of some natural discharge from Uranus.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by gerf (532474)

      Uranus may pose less of a danger to probes since less damaging material encircles the planet.

      I hope you realize what you've just said?

  • From the aricle:

    "It seems unlikely that moonlets are remainders of a single catastrophic event that created the whole ring system, because in this case a uniform distribution would emerge"

    From the summary:

    "...moonlets embedded in Saturn's outer rings that are likely the remains of a larger moon that was shattered by an asteroid or comet."

    So the article says that it's unlikely that it was a single event. The summary says that it was a moon being shattered, which of course would fit the definition of a single catastrophic event. What am I overlooking here?

  • Shattered is the past (Score:3, Funny)

    by icepick72 (834363) on Wednesday October 24 2007, @11:34PM (#21109505)
    That shattered moon will just have to pick up the pieces and carry on like everyone else.
  • ...this is a result of (god/allah/the great bellybutton in the sky) playing billiards. He was aiming for the moon to get knocked into the corner pocket, but ended up putting a bit too much force into the shot. Oh well, his next shot should be golden, he's going to try and pocket the Earth into the sun. Ever wondered why the Mayan calendar counts down?
  • Only one force [nasa.gov] in the known universe is capable of unleashing such a devastating blast.

    • Only one force in the known universe is capable of unleashing such a devastating blast.
      Don't be too proud of this astronomical terror you've discovered.

  • Myth Busters (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tablizer (95088) on Thursday October 25 2007, @12:35AM (#21109847) Homepage Journal
    Can the Myth Busters test this by smashing an asteroid in orbit around Earth? I wanna ring too.

  • Old News (Score:5, Funny)

    by commodoresloat (172735) * on Thursday October 25 2007, @12:35AM (#21109851) Homepage
    From TFA: "A narrow belt harboring moonlets as large as football stadiums discovered in Saturn's outermost ring probably resulted when a larger moon was shattered by a wayward asteroid or comet eons ago, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder study."

    Typical slashdot; recycled news from millions of years ago This story is probably a dupe from then.
  • So the folks at Boulder announced it, but did they really discover it? Cassini's a pretty sophisticated robot and did all of the observation and a lot of the discerning and differentiation work, so when do we start to give credit where credit is due? It's now generally accepted that Rosalind Franklin was one of the primary discoverers of DNA (Watson's petty and dismissive BS aside), so why is this so different? A robot discovered this (former) moon, not a human. Do we name it after Cassini?

    Just a thought.
    • And maybe it was Galileo's telescope that discovered Jupiter's moons.
      • If Galileo's telescope launched itself, went to Jupiter, circled the moons, took pictures, calculated anomalies (=decided what was mathematically interesting), and corrected its own course and adjusted its own eyepiece to take even more detailed pictures and then sent them back for another researcher to analyze, then yes.

        If you read http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/ [nasa.gov] it's notable that Cassini is a nuclear-powered robot that processes data "in situ" from remote and direct sensing equipment. It's not jus
  • Even as a young child gazing into the skies at night, and marvelling at the bright rainbow coloured rings boldly circling the planet Saturn, I always thought to myself 'You know, there is probably a moon in them that rings'
  • Time to bring in Bob the Builder, Bruce Willis, MacGuyver and a roll of tape.

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