Slashdot Mirror
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."
with that ridge on this pic : http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/image -details.cfm?imageID=1270
it REALLY has a passing resemblance to a death star.
did anyone else notice this?
...but you don't see it on the front page of Slashdot.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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!!"
That's no moon.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
...I think it was had a story about a planet with a wall round the middle. (A long time ago now.) If there's any chance this wall has similar properties, we need to get a robot down there to take a look at it.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
This cant be coincidence..
...stars!
(if you believe in the book version that is).
This is a moutains "belt". Nothing to do with Saturn's belt. I assume it rotates with the moon, but I might be wrong ;)
Why is it surprising that tall mountain ridges are found on small (relative to planets) moons, where there may be little weather and low gravity to cause their erosion?
But it could be a continuous monolith? A mobius monolith perhaps?
Give a geek an interesting, if fictional, concept and he's doomed to make lame jokes about it for the rest of eternity....
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.)
The NASA summary says the ridge can reach 20km/12m wide. The height only reaches 13km/8m, only about half the actual height of Olympus Mons. Proportionally, though, it's about 2.5 times the size of Olympus Mons. Still very impressive.
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
It's a ridge on the planet surface, not a ring.
But I don't see why it is "amazing in such a small moon". Aren't larger irregularities to be expected with smaller bodies? For instance, the Mariana-Everest difference is about 19 km, so Earth's crust can be described crudely as "R0 +/- 9.5 km". Olympus Mons on Mars is at 26 km above surrounding ground. Comets are not even spherical - the "peaks" are as big as the rest of the "planet". So why is Iapetus's ridge considered surprising? I'm more interested in the ridge being *only* as tall as Olympus Mons, which is on a planet 5 times the size of Iapetus.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Looks like a walnut to me.
Must mean that humans were created from space aliens and the egyptians were actually a space fairing race.
I think it is the remains of the ancient circum-Iapetus particle accelerator.
Perhaps Lapetus has strange magnetic fields or equator centric tectonic movements.
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
The most unique, and perhaps most remarkable feature discovered on Iapetus in Cassini images is a topographic ridge that coincides almost exactly with the geographic equator.
Apparantly, yes.
Ahhhahahah! hahahaha! hahahaha...ooooo, just shoot me now.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Oh my, thousands of nerds will come out and rejoyce over this pic.
Screw science tag; it's Star Wars, baby!
[Literally, I expect to see little scientific discourse on this thread...so sad.]
...you insensitive clods. :)
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
I don't see how that would be possible, considering we have the Western world's absolute stupidest politicians, who are chosen by the Western world's most fervently anti-intellectual electorate.
Cost of Cassini mission per day (max): $821,917.81
Cost of Iraq War per day (min): $225,563,909.77
Cassini mission body count (since 10/15/97): 0
Iraq war body count (since 3/19/03) (min): 15,094
Anybody can present the numbers. But who's listening, really?
Thanks.
Stories like this make slashdot cool.
Does it go on forever?
Coincidences are weird, sometimes.
Kim Stanley Robinson is well known for his hard sci-fi Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars). He has also written a small and memorable fantasy book, A Short, Sharp Shock, which takes place on a strange world covered by sea, almost perfectly bisected by a tall, narrow ridge that seems to run all around the world (but maybe only for 1300 km?) and that sometimes almost reaches the sea, sometimes climbs up to great heights (20 km maybe?).
Just a coincidence, of course, but it's funny that a man who loves space in general and planets in particular would use an existing but at the time unknown geological feature as the basis of a fantasy book.
The ridge is 13km high and 20km wide.
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
o_O.
:O
It's a giant space WALNUT.
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 cost me $1 to buy a cheeseburger this afternoon, and to my knowledge no person was killed in the process. So I guess with your logic, the government should spend billions on cheeseburgers. Well, I wouldn't mind.
And that is definitely a parting line, just an artifact of the mold.
Neil is that you? Yeah yeah, it's me... Neil...
Article submitter didn't take Astronomy 101 apparently. Small planetoids tend to have more prominent geological features than larger planets because stronger gravity pulls everything together harder and flattens things out. For instance, Olympus Mons on Mars is much higher than any mountain on Earth precisely because Earth has stronger gravity.
I'd dare say the world would be better off. Heck, if they just burned 200 billion one dollars bills the world would be much better off.
Play Command HQ online
I have two half-baked theories: After the large impact, the planet was sent into a spin, centrifical force pushed the debris out to the equator where it settled. My other thory was explained much better in is in the first link in the post. I don't think this looks like volcanic effects.
In what species does "giving birth" involve having a narrow belt around your midsection???
Forget the walnut jokes, and the deathstar jokes, a real idea, to be shot down with real science (I hope):
1) Moon form as overall a solid shell, but has a core containing radioactive materials
2) Due to composition, heat builds up faster than it escapes, and builds preasure as the center expands
3) Preasure eventually causes outer solid shell to crack along the equator at the time, molten material flows out, and forms band, and solidifies, never to occur again.
Thoughts?
..like a Russian Doll, open it up & there's another moon inside!
Let's call it Kirk's Equator.
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.
This is a remnant from the Iapetusian Cold War, when the folk from the northern hemisphere were separated from those in the southern.
Be grateful that Cassini-Huygens' lens isn't more powerful or you might have been able to make out David Hasselhoff standing on it singing a song about freedom.
Where are all the sperm trying to get in?
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
Slartibartfast forgot to remove the glue that remained after merging the two half-sphere's together...
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
1. It was originally two moons, of the same size. They collided, leaving a ridge at the join.
2. It will become two moons, of the same size. It is in the process of mitosis.
3. It is a giant cricket ball.
4. This is the seam the mould left.
5. There is no spoon. I mean, moon.
6. Aliens did it as a display of power.
7. We did it, millions of years ago, before nuking ourselves and starting again. As a warning to ourselves in the future, which we are now ignoring.
8. Aliens did it for a joke.
9. This is what the Beagle has been up to since we lost it.
I have run out of ideas and can't think of any proper suggestions.
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
... cause it kept mooning passing ships.
Send/track messages to 100K people: www.xPressAlert.com
THAT's where it's hiding it's intellectual property theft evidence!
My best sig is this one.
Why? There is a limit on which heights are possible for a given celestial body (planets etc., that is, I'm not counting in stars here), and that limit is actually higher for a smaller body (for example, a volcano the size (height) of Olympus Mons wouldn't even theoretically be possible on earth).
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
So, we have a really really big nut! The question is only what's inside, and what you need to smash him, in order to find what's inside.
Iapetus is American?
This sentence no verb.
Looks like Bugs Bunny definitely took a wrong turn at Albuquerque...
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
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
so some idiot can go climb this
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/image -details.cfm?imageID=1270
Dare I say it?
That's no moon....that's a space station!
I believe we should start training our X Wing pilots to hit Womp Rats in Beggar's Canyon NOW.
-Styopa
Many of the smaller moons/asteroids are barely spherical, and having been hit so often, barely held together by gravity. given the size of the impact crater, it is possible this moon was nearly torn apart by that impact, and the belt is a relic of that event.
Some of the smaller moons & asteroids out there are more like piles of rubble held together by gravity than solid bodies - thus the headaches in what to do if one were ever found to be on collision course with earth, since an attempt to move it of course would merely fragment the body..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
However there can only be tidal effects if the moon is rotating around itself at a different rate as it revolves around its parent body. For Iapetus, just like our moon, the two rates are the same and they always present the same face to their parent. This implies only minimal tidal effects due to the eccentricity of the orbit.
s /images/PIA06166-br500.jpg
on how much places the mountain ring is broken. This means he is older than the formations, who broke him. It will be probably not wrong to say, he is at least one milliard years old.
Maybe he is relict from times, when the equator was fluid. When the fluid freeze you have your mountain across the equator.
Right now, that's true, but maybe this was not the fall in the past.
Note, that this mountain ring seem's to be very old. See on the photo
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/moon
Midnight at the Well of Souls.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
In separate news, I would be willing to expect that someone will point out that a planetoid like this little dude does not form in the 'interstellar void' where it is expected to be nicely spherical. This sucker grew up exposed to some mondo tides, so it's reasonable to assume that while the crust may have cooled significantly, the core may look like a kneaded bowl of bread dough, and be nice and toasty. Makes sense that there is a pressure ridge of crust all the way around it. Hey- this planet has a pressure ridge of crust too ! Just worn down and cracked all over the place...
If we find three rings braided into a ponytail, it's time to start stockpiling nukes in Washington.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/image -details.cfm?imageID=1270
Does it look like:
a) the death star
b) a lemon
c) the suse logo
???
It was assembled - the two halves must join somewhere...
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
a giant mold line.
Since we're all wildly speculating anyway.
I have *real* trouble believing that's natural.
Damn, we missed 'em by how many millions of years?
mark
Anyone read Kim Stanley Robinson's [Red/Green/Blue] Mars?
Reminds me of the *big* space elevator cable that fell. If that caused lava flows/vulcanism in a line....
mark
It's just a little extra holiday weight. You know how it is, it's hard to stay on your diet during the holidays. I'm working on getting rid of it and would appreciate it if you didn't keep bringing it up.
Honey does this belt make my moon look big?
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA05423
the real death star...looking....moon......thing.
Two pages are linked in the /. post, the first page says:
"One of these features is a long narrow ridge that lies almost exactly on the equator of Iapetus, bisects its entire dark hemisphere and reaches 20 kilometers high (12 miles)."
But the second page says:
"The ridge is conspicuous in the picture as an approximately 20-kilometer wide (12 miles) band that extends from the western (left) side of the disc almost to the day/night boundary on the right. On the left horizon, the peak of the ridge reaches at least 13 kilometers (8 miles) above the surrounding terrain."
So how high is that ridge?
But didn't the Death Star have a trench around its equator, not a ridge? So wouldn't that make this a soft of anti-Death Star? A Life Star if you'll excuse my poor humor.
Looks like someone forgot to file this down.
The Intelligent Design pushers will have a field day with this one!
***Foucault is watching you..***
Unicron, I choose you!
notice that it is only 8 miles high. from http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/image -details.cfm?imageID=1270
The most unique, and perhaps most remarkable feature discovered on Iapetus in Cassini images is a topographic ridge that coincides almost exactly with the geographic equator. The ridge is conspicuous in the picture as an approximately 20-kilometer wide (12 miles) band that extends from the western (left) side of the disc almost to the day/night boundary on the right. On the left horizon, the peak of the ridge reaches at least 13 kilometers (8 miles) above the surrounding terrain. Along the roughly 1,300 kilometer (800 mile) length over which it can be traced in this picture, it remains almost exactly parallel to the equator within a couple of degrees. The physical origin of the ridge has yet to be explained. It is not yet clear whether the ridge is a mountain belt that has folded upward, or an extensional crack in the surface through which material from inside Iapetus erupted onto the surface and accumulated locally, forming the ridge. The origin of Cassini Regio is a long-standing debate among scientists. One theory proposes that its dark material may have erupted onto Iapetus's icy surface from the interior. Another theory holds that the dark material represented accumulated debris ejected by impact events on dark, outer satellites of Saturn. Details of this Cassini image mosaic do not definitively rule out either of the theories. However, they do provide important new insights and constraints.
I thought it was obvious too, I wonder how many obvious explanations are out there.
Isn't it obvious that this is proof that God exists? It is left over evidence that all moons were put together from two parts, kind of like those gum ball machine eggs that come with toys in them.
Maybe this is farfetched, but is it possible with present day AI for a supercomputer programmed with the knowledge of every scientific fact about physics to come up with possible scenarios as to how a moon might develop a feature like this belt?
...I find allegations that Iapetus has 'a bulging waistline' quite offensive and hurtful.
Not untrue, you understand. Just hurtful.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
http://math.cofc.edu/faculty/kasman/MATHFICT/mfvie w.php?callnumber=mf319
i'm no scientist, but a couple of thoughts:
1: the ridge's length coincides very well with one axis of the extent of the dark material on the moon
2: (according to the article, i can only barely make this out myself) a large number of the craters have exposed clean ice only on the part of the rim that would be sheltered from anything coming from the equator. this includes the really big, old crater in the center of the picture, but also lots of newer ones.
3. *none* of the visible craters (as far as i can make out) have a clean basin, implying (to me) that the black material was laid down since the last significant impact on the moon; although, without wind, maybe most of the black material was just lifted straight up and fell right back down.
so, i would guess that the center ridge formed as a very odd volcanic eruption (or passing blow by a planet killing laser) which threw black material over half the moon. apparently this happened relatively recently, and not in conjunction with the large crater visible on the picture (though maybe with another newer one that isn't visible)
That's totally the Death Star trench. I mean, no question about it.
Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain.
NASAsays that it Can you tell me the URI of "NASA summary"?
Sorry if I am missing something.
If any of y'all wind up working for the parent poster, make sure to hold on to your hands....(from Arthur C. Clarke's _The Fountains of Paradise_ (1979))
... Great Wall of Iapetus imaged by Western surveillance satellite.
Film at 11
We can rest assured in the fact that, for every moon that coincidentally has a ridge coinciding with its equator there are thousands of moons elsewhere which do not. The reason we notice the "unusual" arrangement is precisely because it is unusual. Unusual to the human mind, that is.
How many mundane events happen to you on a daily basis? And how many coincidental and weird ones? Does that mean there is a ghost following you around making strange things happen? Of course not. We notice weird stuff because that's what our brains evolved to do. Ignore the usual and pick out the unusual.
Yawn...
According to the story, the dark side of the moon is almost perfectly bisected
There is no dark side of the moon, really.
As a matter of fact, it's all dark.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
Seems to me that pictures of objects in space would have stars in the background, but no picture from NASA has stars anywhere.
Other than the obvious conspiracy theories, is there an explanation?
Why couldn't this moon have been formed by the collision of two similarly-sized bodies? Not a spectacular Industrial Lights and Magic collision, but suppose they were in the same (or similar) orbits that eventually converged? I imagine it as more of a crush than and crash.
This might account for material not flying out. Additionally, it might account for the equatorial ridge, where mantle materials piled up on each other during the crushing gravitational embrace. As gravity pulled the new object closer to circular, bits crushed up around the equator. However, that gravity, while having created a new, larger, circular body, but might not have been strong enough to erase a feature as relatively small as this ridge.
I am not a student of science, however, so don't think I have anything to support this notion with other than wild fantasy and lack of interesting shows on basic cable.
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
"Iape has a grey belt in the martial arts. I ain't gonna mess with him. I'll go pick on Mimus instead. Mim already has a missing eye."
Table-ized A.I.
how cool is it that we're seeing this, and some of us, years ago, were so fascinated by the images coming back from Voyager 2 that we were certain we'd become astronomers, space explorers, little future Buck Rogers and Dr. Whos... this is awesome. :D
-- haaz.
It is all dark.
between the greater and lesser infinities sleep the dreams undreamt
What I don't get is why Slashdot is treating this as new news; they were first noticed by Cassini in pictures taken between October 15-20, 2004, and had been detected previously by Voyager. They've been widely reported in the past reporting about the Cassini mission (for example, here on Dec. 8th)
Slashdot: Yesterday's News, Today!
Hey, guys, I'm just pleased as punch to report that it's a fleet of a hundred Vogon Battle Destroyers!
Oh thanks ! Sorry I didn't see that link.
I don't know how they define height of land features on heavenly body with no sea.
Maybe it is "13 kilometers (8 miles) above the surrounding terrain" but somehow "20km" above something(average height ?).
Simple, that is where the two parts are glued together. Obviously the maker didn't find the time to clean it up before displaying it.
______
Huh?
If it were set to such a rapid spin, where did all of the energy dissipate to? Yes, it is tidally locked with Saturn (79 day period), but that would be some major energy to dissipate through tidal locking if you want to have it end up this slow.
However, you are right to think that centri*fugal* forces can play a roll on a body's shape. Usually this is manifested as an equatorial bulge - even Earth has one. Relatively fast spinning gas giants like Jupiter have dramatic bulges.
However, normally centrifugal forces don't create a distinct mountain range; it's typically a smooth, gradual bulge. Perhaps we're looking at, as another possibility the decay of a mini-ring system around the moon itself (although, then why would it appear to be distinct mountains?), or perhaps centrifugal forces which weakened the crust enough to encourage volcanism in that region alone (however, Iapetus's low rotation speed seems problematic for this). Who knows... It's an interesting puzzle, just like the moon itself.
P.S. - not all volcanism produces cinder cones, you know... some volcanism is just simple flows oozing from under the surface.
Hey, guys, I'm just pleased as punch to report that it's a fleet of a hundred Vogon Battle Destroyers!
That's no moon...it's a Space Station! ;-)
Stiny! Get me a danish!
the government should spend billions on cheeseburgers But we are already spending billions on pork.
Pedants like to point out that there is no "Dark Side of the Moon" when referring to Earth's Moon, because during the month all portions of the Moon eventually have a full "day" of sunlight.
In the case of Iapetus, there really is a dark side, not because one side never sees the sun, but because it is just, well, dark. For some reason half of Iapetus is dark, and the other half is light - much like those Star Trek guys.
Here's NASA's page on the subject of Iapetus' dark side.
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
10. The moon was actually injection-molded.
9. The hill is the remains of an ancient alien rail-gun launcher.
8. Iapetus, in a fit of sibling jealousy, has attempted to grow its own rings.
7. Percival Lowell accidentally based his sketches on the wrong planet.
6. This is the planet from Kim Stanley Robinson's "A Short, Sharp Shock", without the oceans.
5. The moon was tectonically separated aeons ago from Vallis Marineris.
4. This is the solar system's frenulum.
3. Ringworld deorbited here.
2. Not much, just loosening its belt after the holidays.
and..
1. That's No Moon...
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
That's the Solar System's biggest walnut.
-- Alastair
Didn't the Starwars story begin as a dream of something that happened long ago? Maybe this was a vision. Perhaps The Force is real.
Perhaps this is the Death Star after a billion years, covered with cosmic debris....dust, rocks..
And perhaps, this was part of the war ware 1/3rd of the Angels rebelled against heaven, as per biblical accounts... Separating good Angel's from the fallen ones (Daemons), from which we get UNIX. You never really know..
Not to get too off topic, but off the page mentioned in this /. article, there're links to videos, mostly computer generated, and one is of Hyugens landing on Titan. According to the video, the parachute remains attached all the way down. In the video, the probe lands with a blackened impact dust-splot and the parachute very politely folds up on itself and lays neatly to one side. But what if the parachute lands on top of the probe? Would that suck or what?
And I can imagine that at least two NASA engineers have discussed the chances of this happening and disagreed on the outcome. Cocky engineer #1 insisting that even a slight breeze is all it would take to cause the chute to fall to the side, and irritated engineer #2 slapping engineer #1 on the back of the head, knocking the gum from his slack mouth, as the pictures come back from the surface of Titan all looking like billowing white fabric.
So anyone out there with some experience with parachutes have an idea if there's a way to build a parachute that always slides sideways on landing?
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
I know it's in the movie, because not only have I seen the movie and never read 2001, but I can even spout "My God, it's full of stars." in exactly the same intonation used by the performer in the movie. Where would that knowledge have come from, if not from the movie eh?
The sequel, 2010. It's not in 2001, only 2010 (unless they've made some change to the DVD in the past few years). You don't have to believe me, though, watch the DVD.
That's what I think it is. It is the remains of an an ancient and degraded alien mag-lev launcher.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
it looks like ANOTHER death star, or a giant walnut. You take your pick.
----------
perl -e 'print(pack("H*","646176652e7761676e657240676d616
It's funny to me that so many people commented on it's striking resemblance to either the death star or a walnut.
We all posted before reading the other comments I guess...
Just don't let covenant wake that thing up.
----------
perl -e 'print(pack("H*","646176652e7761676e657240676d616