Saturn May Have Given Birth To a Baby Moon 71
astroengine (1577233) writes "NASA's Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft has imaged something peculiar on the outermost edge of the gas giant's A-ring. A bright knot, or arc, has been spotted 20 percent brighter than the surrounding ring material and astronomers are interpreting it as a gravitational disturbance caused by a tiny moon. "We have not seen anything like this before," said Carl Murray of Queen Mary University of London. 'We may be looking at the act of birth, where this object is just leaving the rings and heading off to be a moon in its own right.'"
Can I be the first to say.....? (Score:5, Funny)
THAT'S NO MOON!
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Can I be the first to say.....? (Score:4, Informative)
Nah, the Saturnians just did yet another launch.. You'd think they would have learned by now that they're really not good at it. Look at all that debris they left in orbit. That's what it's going to look like around the Earth in a few thousand years, if we don't start cleaning up after ourselves.
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
"I felt a disturbance in the gravitational force, as if thousands of tiny particles coalesced into a single moon and were suddenly silenced."
Re: (Score:1)
Saturn, previously thought to be a planet, surprised the world by being a life-form. Scientists are scrambling to Mars where a moon size chunk of what appears to be feces expelled by the entity previously known as planet, crashed.
Film @ 11.
That's no moon! (Score:3)
Saturn already has "confirmed" moons about the length of a drag strip.... :/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
I wonder if this one will be that exciting.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Republic credits? Republic credits are no good out here. I need something more real.
At least momma had a ring (Score:1)
And a lovely, sparkly ring it is, too!
Catastrophism (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You think Velikovsky got carried away? John Ackerman [firmament-chaos.com] picked up where he left off.
But I came to leave the same comment. Well, the Velikovshy part, I didn't expect to find anyone who had read Jim's stuff. I miss him, I used to e-mail back and forth a occasionally. I do own copies of all of his books, most in hardback, and the first editions of the last dozen or so. I never had to heart to tell him that his last few were not very good.
Anyway, here's to the new baby moon in Saturn's cradle.
Re: (Score:2)
I have to say I miss Hogan also. My wife and I have also read most of Hogan's books and thoroughly enjoyed them. We are currently introducing our youngest to Hogan by reading Code of the Lifemaker as a family. His writing was not as good near the end and in all he did not publish near enough for my liking. I've yet to find a similar author to replace him in my library. If you have any suggestions I'd be interested in hearing them.
That all said, I had not heard of Velikovsky or John Ackerman... will hav
Re: (Score:2)
Velokovsky (and Ackerman) wrote about the birth of Venus, and Mars waging war on the Earth as an actual hypothesis as to how the solar system got to how we view it today. Hogan, as was often his style, took that idea and wove a fictional story around it.
I wish I had recommendations of other lesser known authors of a similar style, but I've never encountered any. For the most part I probably read the same books that most techies do, Asimov, Gibson, Stephenson. It was just a fluke that my mother bought me the
Re: (Score:2)
There are certain topics for which simplistic narratives dominate over thorough investigation and rational discourse. These include:
(1) Anything about Velikovsky or mythology: Most people simply assume that mythology = myth. Very few people take the time to investigate any observed correspondences between the stories held by cultures -- and even when suggestions are made for scientific explanations.
You're only half right. These days no one has a problem with proposing that myths may be based on scientific realities. There have been intriguing proposals about the relation between the myth of Atlantis and the erruption of Thera [wikipedia.org], a similar or identical link to the parting of the Red Sea, and several interesting theories about what might have inspired the various deluge mythologies [wikipedia.org].
The problem with Velikovsky is that his proposed solutions were batshit crazy. If the Uniformitarians were insisting that
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't a gas giant "giving birth" to a moon count? Hot Venus? Radio signal from Jupiter?
No, it doesn't. Velikovsky theorized that Venus was ejected from Jupiter. We have no good theories for how or why a gas giant would spontaneously produce and then eject a smaller terrestrial planet, not to mention no physical evidence that i've seen that it has ever actually happened.
What is going on here is that some of the material in Saturn's rings has accreted together into a moonlet. It's already been theorized that that's how at least some of Saturn's other 100+ moonlets were formed. The only reas
hold on, here (Score:2)
It's just a big zit; relax
The Birth of a Moon... (Score:2)
... or a Space Baby?
Wasn't a monolith shaped object spotted on Mars recently?
Re: (Score:1)
,,,at least she got some rings first...
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Not the whole ring system. Only the A-D rings are within the Roche limit. But the phenomenon discussed here is happening in the A-ring, so this limitation does indeed apply. I don't understand how a moon could accrete here.
Re: (Score:2)
Also to my understanding, the nature of Roche's limit is that it only affects objects big enough and with enough spin to experience gravitational-based tidal forces. that suggests that objects below/around that size might temporarily form until they collect enough mass and spin to begin experiencing those forces, after which point they'd break up again?
Awwww (Score:5, Funny)
They're so cute, when they're still little.
Re: (Score:2)
until you have to change the first diaper
Re: (Score:2)
:shakes head: then people flush them down the toilet...
Re: (Score:1)
My GF's aunt used to say that when they are little's, you feel like you want to eat them. Once they get to the adolescence, you wonder why you didn't
and you'll go blind (Score:3, Funny)
See, this is what happens when rings are knotty.
Re: (Score:2)
You've a wicked sense of humor, Darth Vader!
The High Council is going to be pissed! (Score:1)
Who's the father? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Now you know what "release the kraken" really means
You mean *DWARF* moon (Score:5, Funny)
(Standing in solidarity with Pluto!!)
Re: (Score:1)
"That is no moon" he said, while gesturing vaguely at the remains of Alderaan. "It has not cleared its orbit."
Re: (Score:2)
You mean *DWARF* moon. Because in order to be considered a *real* moon, it has to clear its orbit of debris.
That's not debris. It's planetary placenta.
Thuktun Flishithy (Score:2)
Its the Fithp
Run for the hills
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe we spotted The Foot.
Okay Saturn! Post a picture! (Score:2)
And everyone else post "AW! HOW CUUUUUTE!"