Slashdot Mirror


New Ring Discovered Around Saturn

HunahpuMonkey writes "BBC News is reporting that 'scientists using the Cassini probe have found a new ring and one, possibly two, new objects orbiting Saturn.' The article also notes that the discoveries are in the planet's contorted F-ring region. The ring of new material seems to be associated with Saturn's moon Atlas."

5 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Stupid Question by Nos. · · Score: 5, Informative

    There's a good article here about what exactly makes up a moon. I can tell you its not about gravity since basically every object with mass has gravity.

  2. Re:Stupid Question by rokzy · · Score: 4, Informative

    argh! EVERYthing with mass has its own gravitational field. fuckingdictionaryit

  3. Re:Stupid Question by rokzy · · Score: 5, Informative

    "satellite" means orbiting a planet.
    "moon" means natural satellite.
    "Moon" means Earth's moon.

  4. Theorists Might be Right by CheshireCatCO · · Score: 4, Informative

    Theorists have posited the existance of small moons (~5 km) inside the F ring for some time. They could explain the odd look and behavior of the F ring, although they are not the only possibility. If these new objects are moons and not temporarly clumps of ring material, it will be interesting to see how the models and data agree (or don't agree).

  5. Re:Stupid Question by Zarf · · Score: 3, Informative

    Try it with a cup full of water, holding the handle outward. Turn it clockwise, once over your arm, and the second time under your elbow (keeping it upright the whole time). Interestingly and amazingly, the cup stays upright, and watching the handle makes two full 360% turns; yet your arm isn't twisted!

    uh, yeah, but that's still spinning.

    And you're assuming that the person isn't sitting down and can get their torso up and around the object. And the 720 degree full spin is just because of additional spatial dimensions which the object has to turn through. The 3-space representation of the object is just a projection of its higher dimensional self. Ofcourse this can be argued to exist as pure conceptual metaphor since spin-space can be argued to not actually exist... ofcourse the definition of actually is open for debate.

    --
    [signature]