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Saturn's Moon Iapetus Has A 'Belt'
Believe writes "In another unexpected find by Cassini-Huygens, Saturn's moon Iapetus shows a bulging waistline. According to the story, the dark side of the moon is almost perfectly bisected by a tall, narrow ridge that runs for 1300 km (808 mi) and rises up to 20 km (12 mi) high. This height is amazing in such a small moon; it rivals Olympus Mons on Mars which is a body 5 times its size."
I think the belt is a physical feature on the moons surface - not a floating belt of debris, rock, etc.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Another source of inspiration.
I'm not sure I understand your question. But in case it helps, Iapetus is tidally locked to Saturn. This means that like our moon it always shows the same face to the parent planet, as it completes one rotation on its axis in the same time it takes to orbit the planet.
The newfound ridge stretches the entire width of the dark hemisphere, meaning the one facing forward in Iapetus' orbital sweep around Saturn (and is thus half visible, half on the 'far side' from Saturn's perspective.)
See the story The Wall Around the World written in 1953 by Theodore R. Cogswell. And look out for the Dark Man!
(The Wall separated the technologists from the magicians.)
Andrew Yeomans
It was our Moon, with Earth countries having a telepresence war. One of the best Lem books IMHO.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Also, Mars has a much thicker crust than Earth. Our mountains literally sink into the mantle when they reach a certain mass.
There is a short-story by Clarke about a universe that contains only one sun and one planet, the universe is about as big as the planets orbit. The planet is constantly showing the same face toward the sun, it has a day-side, very hot, and anight side, very cold. Humans live around the equator where the temperature is right.
In the book the universe actually ends somewhere around the north pole(dark side) of the planet and a long time ago humans built a great wall to hide the end of the universe... great short-story.
Having just read the very fine Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, he describes the spectacular collapse of a space elevator causing a ring that went almost twice around the equator of Mars.
Actually, the space elevator was actually one of Arthur C Clarke's ideas
The structure of the ring is a bit different from this one, but the location (along the equator) is the link.
Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird -- Proverbs 1:17
The book 2010 was written as a sequel to the movie, not to the book. There are some things in the book from the book 2001 ("My god, it's full of stars!" wasn't in the movie - yes,I've checked a dozen times), but it discards Saturn and re-sets everything to Jupiter. The reason Jupiter was used in the movie? They couldn't get a convincing enough Saturn, and decided that by eliminating the ring by depicting Jupiter instead they'd simplify the FX issues.