Astronomers Solve Puzzle of the Mountains That Fell From Space 51
KentuckyFC (1144503) writes "Iapetus, Saturn's third largest moon, was first photographed by the Cassini spacecraft on 31 December 2004. The images created something of a stir. Clearly visible was a narrow, steep ridge of mountains that stretch almost halfway around the moon's equator. The question that has since puzzled astronomers is how this mountain range got there. Now evidence is mounting that this mountain range is not the result of tectonic or volcanic activity, like mountain ranges on other planets. Instead, astronomers are increasingly convinced that this mountain range fell from space. The latest evidence is a study of the shape of the mountains using 3-D images generated from Cassini data. They show that the angle of the mountainsides is close to the angle of repose, that's the greatest angle that a granular material can form before it landslides. That's not proof but it certainly consistent with this exotic formation theory. So how might this have happened?
Astronomers think that early in its life, Iapetus must have been hit by another moon, sending huge volumes of ejecta into orbit. Some of this condensed into a new moon that escaped into space. However, the rest formed an unstable ring that gradually spiraled in towards the moon, eventually depositing the material in a narrow ridge around the equator. Cassini's next encounter with Iapetus will be in 2015 which should give astronomers another chance to study the strangest mountain range in the Solar System."
Astronomers think that early in its life, Iapetus must have been hit by another moon, sending huge volumes of ejecta into orbit. Some of this condensed into a new moon that escaped into space. However, the rest formed an unstable ring that gradually spiraled in towards the moon, eventually depositing the material in a narrow ridge around the equator. Cassini's next encounter with Iapetus will be in 2015 which should give astronomers another chance to study the strangest mountain range in the Solar System."
How about... (Score:2)
...a collapsed ring system?
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Guess I should have been a little more explicit. I meant, as distinguished from one that required another object impact. Just an original ring system.
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The wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] discusses different theories of the mountain range formation. A collapsed ring system is one of them. The article here is introducing a new theory.
Re:How about... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Exactly, this article essentially is an elaboration on the Wiki Article's theory # 3.
They make much of the angle of repose, but the angle of repose is not a constant. Gravity of the planet/moon affects this angle, (which I am sure they accounted for), but so does the water content, or any other potentially binding agent (frozen CO2, etc) of the material. Even the shape of the grains of sand can affect the Angle of Repose.
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See a doctor.
Er... (Score:1)
"That's not proof but it certainly consistent with this exotic formation theory."
So they didn't solve the puzzle.
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They solved the puzzle, but didn't compare their solution to the one printed upside down on the bottom of the page yet.
Doesn't Gravity Affect Angle of Repose? (Score:2, Interesting)
Iapetus has only a fraction of Earth's gravity (Iapetus radius 735 KM, Earth radius 6371 KM, you do the math, after figuring out the relative density for yourself). Wouldn't a hugely smaller gravity significantly affect the angle of repose they carry on about in that referenced scientific paper? I doubt you can compare the angle of repose of rounded particles (or snow and hail) on Earth with that of a very small _and airless!_ moon.
But I'll leave that to the astrophysicists to work out.
Re:Doesn't Gravity Affect Angle of Repose? (Score:5, Insightful)
Iapetus has only a fraction of Earth's gravity (Iapetus radius 735 KM, Earth radius 6371 KM, you do the math, after figuring out the relative density for yourself). Wouldn't a hugely smaller gravity significantly affect the angle of repose they carry on about in that referenced scientific paper? I doubt you can compare the angle of repose of rounded particles (or snow and hail) on Earth with that of a very small _and airless!_ moon.
But I'll leave that to the astrophysicists to work out.
From the references in that exact article you criticize (but clearly didn't read):
"Kleinhans, M. G., Markies, H., de Vet, S. J., in 't Veld, A. C., Postema, F. N., 2011. Static and dynamic angles of repose in loose granular materials under reduced gravity. Journal of Geophysical Research 116, E11004."
So, yes, I'd say they did take into account the low gravity.
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The article I read. The references I read, but didn't look up (since I don't subscribe to the Journal of Geophysical Research). If they were using reduced gravity data, they should've said so in the body of the article. They didn't. That's my point: we don't know WHAT they took into account.
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Re:Doesn't Gravity Affect Angle of Repose? (Score:4, Informative)
Astrophysicists my ass... Geologists have this covered! From "Static and dynamic angles of repose in loose granular materials under reduced gravity"
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/... [harvard.edu]
Until now it has been assumed that the angles of repose are independent of gravitational acceleration. The objective of this work is to experimentally determine whether the angles of repose depend on gravity. In 33 parabolic flights in a well-controlled research aircraft we recorded avalanching granular materials in rotating drums at effective gravitational accelerations of 0.1, 0.38 and 1.0 times the terrestrial value. The granular materials varied in particle size and rounding and had air or water as interstitial fluid. Materials with angular grains had time-averaged angles of about 40 degrees and with rounded grains about 25 degrees for all effective gravitational accelerations, except the finest glass beads in air, which was explained by static electricity. For all materials, the static angle of repose increases about 5 degrees with reduced gravity, whereas the dynamic angle decreases with about 10 degrees. Consequently, the avalanche size increases with reduced gravity.
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Yes, but his experimental platform is far from perfect, wouldn't you agree?
He's talking parabolic flights in powered aircraft, which lasts, what, maybe 30 seconds [wikimedia.org], and could not easily be shielded from all sorts of vibrations.
So the good geologist's work probably can't account for a moon-sized platform, or a mixed particle size, or the inclusion of water ice, etc. The angles do vary with gravity, grain size, grain polishing, binding agent inclusion, etc.
Still the Subject study uses a wide definition of the
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But I'll leave that to the astrophysicists to work out.
Why do you presume they didn't take it into account already?
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In case someone were wondering, Iapetus' equatorial surface gravity is about 2.3% that of Earth's, or 1/43rd as strong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iapetus_(moon) [wikipedia.org]
Nope (Score:1)
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Looks more like our space overlords were using a mold and didn't clean up the seam.
Solved? (Score:1)
Re:Solved? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does not sound like they solved it. Headline should be "Astronomers Ponder Puzzle..." perhaps?
No, it should be, "Astronomers Increase Plausibility of Exotic Formation for Iapetus Mountain Range".
"Proof" is not something science does. Nor does it do "disproof", despite Karl Popper's well-marketed myth of method.
Science is the discipline of publicly testing ideas by systematic observation, controlled experiment and Bayesian inference, and the only thing Bayesian inference can ever do is increase or decrease the plausibility of some proposition or propositions. Plausibilities range between epsilon and omega = 1 - epsilon (0 and 1 are epistemic errors, the term for which is "faith").
So in this case they have done more than "pondering the puzzle": they have contributed to knowledge (which is by its nature uncertain) by increasing the plausibility of the proposition that these mountains "fell from space".
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Just read the original paper [arxiv.org].
(Yes, I know it was one of the links in the OP, but...)
Iapetus (Score:2)
"Iapetus, Saturn's third largest moon, was first photographed by the Cassini spacecraft on 31 December 2004."
Really? First photographed in 2004? Didn't any of the earlier probes like Voyager take pictures of it?
I seem to remember something about strange light and dark patterns on that moon from a book i read many years ago.
I think it was written by a "distinguished but elderly scientist"
Re:Iapetus (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, Iapetus was photographed by Voyager 2 in 1981 (link to NASA image with metadata listed [nasa.gov]), and I would suspect that there were earth based images taken well before that (but none that would show any detail).
Who would have expected a summary on Slashdot to be carelessly wrong about something factual and easily verified?
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New year's eve 2004 was the first time that Cassini imaged Iapetus. At least that was how I read the sentence.
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Yeah, me too. It could be ambiguous, but you kinda have to work at it.
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Your errors in parsing the date clause notwithstanding, which has been covered by others, the latter part of your comment is also off point: Clarke was not working from pictures of Iapetus. He completely made up his description, based on zero evidence, which just happened to turn out to me similar to the actual two-tone coloring. No monolith, though.
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Clarke was probably aware of the following (from wikipedia's article on Iapetus [wikipedia.org]):
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It was first photographed by the Cassini spacecraft on 31 December 2004. It was first photographed by any spacecraft in 1981.
Like 1999 KW4 (Score:2)
You mean, like the asteroid 1999 KW4 [wikipedia.org] ? I'd say that the source of the Iapetus ridge has been pretty obvious since the Science [sciencemag.org] papers [sciencemag.org] on that body.
Re:Simple answer? (Score:4, Insightful)
Saturn's ring material falling onto the Iapetus. This "mountain range" is technically an equatorial ridge, but as anyone who's seen an hour glass it's not hard to imagine (-- disclaimer) the same thing is happening on the moon of a planet with it's own ring system.
No. In that theory, the satellites interior to Iapetus, i.e., Mimas, Enceladas,Tethys, Dione, Rhea and (maybe) Titan would all have similar equatorial ridges, which they do not.
Quite interesting (Score:5, Informative)
Till we see 1300km long and 10 to 10 km diameter asteroids in space, we just have to file it under, "it is the best we could do, under these circumstances".
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Space-whale turds?
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Hmm...
You are explicitly assuming large objects "1300 km long objects" - whereas they are discussing much smaller objects, most may be much smaller than a metre, probably smaller than sand grains.
The exact size is not too crucial, but at any rate much much smaller than 1300 km long.
They are definitely not saying each mountain is a separate large object, but built up of many much smaller objects.
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The best source of large number of smaller meter sized rocks aligned in a long line is the rings of Saturn nearby. Since the moon is tidally locked to Saturn, and its orbit is oblique, if it passes the rings it would possibly pass at the same angle and same orientation every time. If it keeps picking up stuff from the rings, it could provide the source rocky rain drops all meter size or smaller that
Medium.com total fail (Score:1)
OMG that medium.com site is exceptionally hard to read. giant font, 90% empty screen. Butt Ugly.
I will avoid this shit as much as possible.
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If only.
It seems to be catching on around teh interwebs.
Roche limit (Score:1)
Or (Score:1)
Since it's composed of ice something from the center, (water) ejected leaving a cavity and the 2 halves "pinched" and extruded a ridge.
Plea to God (Score:1)
Do it again, do it again!
have a nice day www.blossomsquare.com (Score:1)
"Iapetus, Saturn's third largest moon, was first p (Score:1)