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Two New Saturnian Moons
Mixel writes "NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting saturn since the 30th of June has uncovered two previously unknown bodies. 'The moons are approximately 3 kilometers (2 miles) and 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) across -- smaller than the city of Boulder, Colorado.' The Huygens probe will be deployed to the large (bigger than Mercury!) yet mysterious moon, Titan, in December."
Thats no moon...
sorry, sorry... I'll get my quote, I mean coat.
Cool, a moon you can actually run all the way around in 20 minutes.
Why must everything be compared to Boulder, Colorado?
nyuk nyuk
...but bigger than Little Rock?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Extra! Extra! Scientists find two tiny rocks millions of miles away! Many surprised they haven't been seen before now!
An artists sketch of the new moons as seen from Earth through a high-powered telescope is shown here
:
This sig is part of your complete breakfast.
Even though they're orbiting Saturn, they're closer to Earth than Boulder, Colorado is.
And by the way, we don't call them "moons" here in Boulder. We refer to them as "planetary companions."
FYI: Boulder is where Mork and Mindy was set.
You forgot Hell, which is where the third episode of Doom takes place.
They are provisionally named S/2004 S1 and S/2004 S2.
Why? Just call them Boulder and Little Rock. But then again, maybe not. Some lawyer might sue. Do cities trademark their names?
I'd say that if two or more bodies are obriting around each other, which in turn are orbiting around a stellar body, then the largest one is a planet, and the smaller one(s) is/are a moon.
So according to your definition, Epsilon Lyrae with its pair of stars orbiting another pair of stars, one of those stars is a planet and the smaller star is a moon.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Only try to realize the truth:
There is no moon.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
The cut-off point is the size that is large enough to resolve individually. Thus the cut-off point changes as technology improves.
:-)
Isn't that a Heisengberg (sp) definition? That definition depends on the observer. How quantum of you
Table-ized A.I.
I think the citizens of Boulder will still fit if they squeeze together a bit.
MAKE YOUR TIME
If we throw a trashbag out of the the ISS does that become a moon?
Science has no place for litterbugs! Shame on you!
Well... a small planet is called a planetoid (eg. Sedna) so -
(Now follow closely on this. It's a work of genius but quite confusing for the layperson)
Let's call these...
Moonoids!
(And the Great Anonymous Coward has achieved immortality for all time for this wonderful, about-to-be-adopted-really-soon-now NASA term!)
My favorite is the 'giant glass worms on Mars'
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
how many library of congress is that?
12. Definitely 12.
I'm having trouble picturing this. How many football fields would you say that is?
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Even the most beautiful moon still doesn't compare to the wonders of Uranus.
G-Force music visualization
we now have a third metric to add to the existing system of measuring everything in pop news stories in "volkswagens" and "rhodeislands" (1), we can now hit that middle mark, "boulders", though it's not so middle...
the conversions for the VBR go something like this (2):
beetle ('classic' at 160" x 60" = 9,600 sq in = 66.67 sq ft footprint
boulder = 25 sq mi = 696,960,000 sq ft
rhode island = 1,214 sq mi = 33,844,377,600 sq ft
which means
10,453,877 beetles in a boulder
48.56 boulders in a rhodeisland
507,640,282 beetles in a rhodeisland
which would make a hellova traffic jam (3)
(1) also haven't read the journals of irrepreoducible results / AIR for a while so this could all seem cribbed - sorry if so
(2) (check my math, it's early still)
(3) virtually no change to downtown newport in the summer however
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
If any unmodified* human, can achieve escape veolocity under it's own power**, then it's not a moon.
;)
African or European?
Now feel free to mod me down
Pavlov. Does this name ring a bell?