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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."
Frodo and Sam: "Here we go again!"
Stereotypical old fashioned cash register: "Cha-ching!"
We're beginning to reach a point where it's just plain silly to describe Saturn's amazing collection of debris as 'moons'.
-1, "1337" speak
The Fithp are coming...
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.
argh! EVERYthing with mass has its own gravitational field. fuckingdictionaryit
Quite. There's so much junk lying in so many rings around Saturn that finding another is hardly big news.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
EVERYTHING has it's own gravitational field. You do, I do, your computer does; the phosphors on my screen displaying this text as I type it each have their own gravitational field.
That being said, I'm pretty sure any body which naturally has a regular orbit around a planet is considered a moon, though you must get into a size limit somewhere otherwise every speck of dust in Saturn's rings could be considerd a separate "moon".
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
We have the F-ring. Now let's work on the G-spot ;0
Moon n.
Large body made out of cheese which cows like to jump over.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
"satellite" means orbiting a planet.
"moon" means natural satellite.
"Moon" means Earth's moon.
So many rings, so many weddings, he must be broke!
How it looks like, of course.
Ballmer: "Developers, Developers, Developers"
Oh, no! It's all coming true!
~Philly
The Universe, will it ever cease to exPAND? Man, if it ever contracts...we're in for it...
Anyone seen my jagged little pill?
They keep finding more bodies in orbit.
That reminds me - I found a new tree in the forest yesterday.
I think I'll name it 'George.'
I think that the only definition that will fly is 'moons are naturally occurring orbital debris.'
And therefore all of the ring particles are moons.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Okay, follow me here on this little bit of circular argument...
... not a SPIN!
I had a long argument with a coworker over the topic of whether the Moon spun. The Moon always presents the same face to the Earth, says he, therefore it never spins. Says I, yes, but from the perspective of the Sun the Moon changes faces so it does spin.
No, the Moon doesn't spin.
Yes it does.
No it doesn't.
Okay, here's an apple and an orange make the "Moon" go 'round the "Earth" and always present the same face to the Earth.
See, it's not spinning!
Then why are your hands all twisted up like that after half a revolution?
That's just a turn
So, back to moons, orbital debris, and ring particles...
Those aren't moons... they're rings and those rings are just moons and those debris aren't rings they're just asteroids caught in the gravity of the larger planet... and those artificial moons are just satellites! And... And... that's not a bug it's an unplanned feature!
[signature]
I wonder how much of the equipment in space runs Linux?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
"That's no moon!"
This seems good to me. Just call our satellite the Moon, call Mars's satellites Phobos and Deimos(sp?), Jupiter's Io, Europa, etc, and so on, and anything without a name or newly discovered can simply be called satellite.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
indeed. Take as another kind of example a geostationary satellite which appears to be over the same point, somewhere along the equator is good. :)
Is it moving, yes. Its orbiting, it just happens to be orbiting at the right distance such that its period is the same as the earths rotation. Ask your coworker about that one
It was sure worth sending this probe, given all the data it has already provided. Scientists must be jumping up and down. However, are we now supposed to modify all the existing drawings and pictures of Saturn to include a new ring?
How the heck did you look up satellite in the dictionary and still manage to spell it wrong?
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
NASA is really just trying to keep you from paying too much attention to Gensis... don't be fooled! :P
(no, I don't have a tinfoil hat; yes, it's a joke)
As in the f-word? :p
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).
Saturn has an F-ring huh? You'd think you'd find an F-ring somewhere closer to Uranus.
Earth is going to have a ring of space crap around it in a few years...
In other news...AOL announced a plan to send thousands of free hours into space. They will be delivered by sending up junk in the shuttle @ 1.5M a launch.
Tell the truth and you won't have so much to remember.
well then how come slashdot hasn't changed the icon that goes with the space stories. I won't believe theirs anouther ring until that happens.
Fry: "As long as you don't make me smell Uranus." Leela: "Huh? I don't get it?" Dr. Farnsworth: "Fry, they changed the name of the planet in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all." Fry: "What's it called now?" Dr. Farnsworth: "Urectum!:
It was done on purpose. That way, most slashdot readers can understand what you are trying to say. Slashdot readers need the spelling errors. I guess you must be new here. :D
That's Mimas!
Click here for a free picture of an iPod!
So when's the wedding and who's the lucky gal?
Basically every object with mass? As far as I know, every object with mass has gravity. Do you know something about gravity I don't?
I was under the impression that the moon was called Luna, just like the sun is technically called Sol (ie Solar System).
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jonathan barket
No no. you're clearly wrong. The Moon is entirely stationary - the rest of the Universe just orbits it in a way that makes it appear to rotate.
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
a long argument with a coworker over the topic of whether the Moon spun
You could run through the demonstratation again, but after a few turns remove the earth object and continue spinning the moon object. Of course you'd need to be in a masochistic mood to continue arguing with such a person, lol.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Personally I think conspiracy theorists will be far more concerned because this article simply comes 'from the dept'..nothing more....
THE dept!!! Scary....
Who are they!? What is their agenda!?
Read basically more as "simply put"
Note that after 2 such twists, his arms may no longer be twisted!
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!
(a girl that danced in a SF nightclub with flaming batons taught me this technique and explained 'spin 1/2' particles to me - which have the same property of being different when rotated 360degrees but the same when rotated 720degrees))
What we're seeing is some dandruff buildup orbiting Saturn.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
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]
"What exactly is the definition of a moon?"
When the ring around uranus is visible, that's mooning.
"Derp de derp."
Ahem, SINCE you assed, ahem, aSKED, I guess if Saturns moons are IN Uranus, those could be called "Moonheroids"... THese are NOT the kind of "kling-ons" you want hanging around...
s s. htm
WOuld Klingons on earth be "anti-government polyps"?
I remember back around 1990 seeing a new Saturn with the license plate:
HazRngs
or maybe
HzRings
It was/is cute pun on Saturn Has Rings and the car being a Saturn, heheh.
Now, these:
http://www.thecommentarybox.co.uk/issue45/kicka
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I haven't checked the respective mass, but I believe that would mean Saturn has no moons. And it certainly would mean that a planet could have at most one moon. That makes little sense; I reject this definition.
...Luna.
Then /everything/ goes by a name, and "moon" is reserved for satellites which obey certain principles (I don't remember what they are).
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
No, I think he's just not being entirely clear. *Everything* with mass has gravity, and that includes you, me, the rings on my fingers, the keyboard I'm typing on, *everything*. For things that light, of course, the gravitational filed is vanishingly, almost unmeasurably small, but it's still there.
In fact, there's an experiment we did in undergrad Physics lab involving small metal balls that allows you to measure the gravitational constant (G in g = GM/(r*r)) by essentially detecting the force of attraction between them.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Come now, the data could be cast to unsigned back on Earth...
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Well, if it's too small to be a space station, then it must be a moon, right?
Let's adopt this definition at Slashdot.
It's a moon if it's big enough that it's own gravity and mass forms itself into a spherical shape.
Phobos... obviously a big rock.
Europa... a moon.
Who the heck modded this as "+1 Interesting"? Wasn't "+1 Let's laugh at this guy's ignorance" available?
Seriously though, I saw a project mentioned on Slashdot, where a guy demonstrates how any object has a gravitational pull.
I ^H^H My son did this experiment for his science fair, and it was way cool. Basically you attempt to neutralize the effects of the Earth's pull, and you can watch small objects move toward each other! We watched two 8 pound weights move at each other, and when I moved one, the other one chases it around.
I never would have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself. And we (er, my son) got an "A".
Does the fact that we hadn't seen them before make them new? I'm going to visit that new continent called Europe next year...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"a celestial body orbiting another of larger size"
By that definition, the Earth is a moon of the sun...
The newly discovered debris aroun saturn are just more evidence that David Bowman is in a foul mood.
First rule of 'the dept', you do not talk about 'the dept'.
=)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
... its a space station.
kulakovich
Did you discover this information on the internet, or the Internet?
I think it's about time to just say that "Saturn has billyuns and billyuns of rings" and be done with it. As long as I've got working radar and enough delta-vee to avoid the big chunks, "here be lots of loose junk" is warning enough.
Or how about, "Saturn has trillions of moons, most of them smaller than a home refrigerator."
Parts of the story that were edited out: ... object is 1 x 4 x 9 km ... ... changed orbit ... ... monkey's walloping each other with thigh bones ...
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
THANK YOU!
atleast someone gets it. =)
"Hemiroids" is an Asteroids clone for the Mac. The space rocks are actually drawn cut in half ("hemi"-spheres).
It was on-topic damnit! I was talking about Saturn and Uranus and whatnot. Sheeesh.
That's exactly what I was getting at.
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jonathan barket