TheCigSmokingMan
Rift Surfer
‘Flying saucers’ around Saturn explained
Findings suggest bizarre moons were formed from particles in rings
By Charles Q. Choi
updated 2:47 p.m. ET, Thurs., Dec. 6, 2007
The formation of strange flying-saucer-shaped moons embedded in Saturn's rings have baffled scientists. New findings suggest they're born largely from clumps of icy particles in the rings themselves, an insight that could shed light on how Earth and other planets coalesced from the disk of matter that once surrounded our newborn sun.
Saturn's rings orbit the planet in a flat disk that corresponds to the planet's equator. Likewise, Earth and the other planets orbit the sun in a fairly flat plane that relates to the sun's equator. The planets, at least the rocky ones, are thought to have formed when bits of material orbiting the newborn sun stuck together, forming larger and larger objects that collided and coalesced.
Observations by NASA's Cassini spacecraft revealed the Saturnian moons Atlas and Pan, each roughly 12 miles from pole to pole, have massive ridges bulging from their equators some 3.7 to 6.5 miles high, giving them the flying-saucer appearance.
In principle, fast rates of spin might have stretched Atlas and Pan out into such unusual shapes, just as tossing a disk of pizza dough flattens it out. But neither moon whirls very quickly, each taking about 14 hours to complete a rotation. Earth, far bigger, rotates in 24 hours, of course.
Carolyn Porco at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., and her colleagues suspected these peculiar moons could be formed mostly from Saturn's rings (rather than from fragments produced in collisions of larger moons, as some have suggested). The location of the ridges lined up precisely with the rings of icy particles in which they were embedded, findings which are detailed in the Dec. 6 issue of the journal Science.
After analyzing the shapes and densities of the moons from data captured by Cassini, Porco's team now finds Pan and Atlas appear to be mostly light, porous, icy bodies, just like the particles making up the rings. Computer simulations suggest one-half to two-thirds of these bizarre moons are made of ring material, piled up on massive, dense fragments of bigger moons that disintegrated billions of years ago after catastrophic collisions with one another.
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Hmmm... Is NASA and JPL up to their "old" tricks... Debunking "Alien Messages"...
Its seem the Aliens have moved to VISUAL MESSAGES like "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"
The ALIENS carved out a few moons (with high powered laser weapons!) to look like "Flying Saucers" so that amatuer astronomers can see their "Alien Art" and message.
Is says "computer simulations suggest...". It really means NASA and JPL can't explain it! /ttiforum/images/graemlins/smile.gif
We Are Not Alone! /ttiforum/images/graemlins/smile.gif
TheCigMan
Findings suggest bizarre moons were formed from particles in rings
By Charles Q. Choi
updated 2:47 p.m. ET, Thurs., Dec. 6, 2007
The formation of strange flying-saucer-shaped moons embedded in Saturn's rings have baffled scientists. New findings suggest they're born largely from clumps of icy particles in the rings themselves, an insight that could shed light on how Earth and other planets coalesced from the disk of matter that once surrounded our newborn sun.
Saturn's rings orbit the planet in a flat disk that corresponds to the planet's equator. Likewise, Earth and the other planets orbit the sun in a fairly flat plane that relates to the sun's equator. The planets, at least the rocky ones, are thought to have formed when bits of material orbiting the newborn sun stuck together, forming larger and larger objects that collided and coalesced.
Observations by NASA's Cassini spacecraft revealed the Saturnian moons Atlas and Pan, each roughly 12 miles from pole to pole, have massive ridges bulging from their equators some 3.7 to 6.5 miles high, giving them the flying-saucer appearance.
In principle, fast rates of spin might have stretched Atlas and Pan out into such unusual shapes, just as tossing a disk of pizza dough flattens it out. But neither moon whirls very quickly, each taking about 14 hours to complete a rotation. Earth, far bigger, rotates in 24 hours, of course.
Carolyn Porco at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., and her colleagues suspected these peculiar moons could be formed mostly from Saturn's rings (rather than from fragments produced in collisions of larger moons, as some have suggested). The location of the ridges lined up precisely with the rings of icy particles in which they were embedded, findings which are detailed in the Dec. 6 issue of the journal Science.
After analyzing the shapes and densities of the moons from data captured by Cassini, Porco's team now finds Pan and Atlas appear to be mostly light, porous, icy bodies, just like the particles making up the rings. Computer simulations suggest one-half to two-thirds of these bizarre moons are made of ring material, piled up on massive, dense fragments of bigger moons that disintegrated billions of years ago after catastrophic collisions with one another.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hmmm... Is NASA and JPL up to their "old" tricks... Debunking "Alien Messages"...
Its seem the Aliens have moved to VISUAL MESSAGES like "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"
The ALIENS carved out a few moons (with high powered laser weapons!) to look like "Flying Saucers" so that amatuer astronomers can see their "Alien Art" and message.
Is says "computer simulations suggest...". It really means NASA and JPL can't explain it! /ttiforum/images/graemlins/smile.gif
We Are Not Alone! /ttiforum/images/graemlins/smile.gif
TheCigMan
