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The Return of Saturn's Spokes
CheshireCatCO writes "After more than a year in orbit around Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft has finally spotted 'spokes' in the rings. Spokes, large radial structures in the rings, where seen by the Voyager spacecraft and have remained difficult to fully explain. The reappearce of the spokes comes about two years earlier than many models predicted."
Is it the Fithp?
Now if someone could make me some bike wheels with rings and spokes like that (minus the gas though).
post
Yeah, but what do models know? A lot of them don't even have degrees.
Astronomers have noticed a giant baseball card embedded in the spokes to make saturn feel like its a real motorcycle.
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
They are one weird phenomena and it was a joy to see them againespecially since we hadnt seen them yet and were eager to know why.
:P
He can say the same about naked women
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
The Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn has finally spotted spokes cutting across the planet's rings, a phenomenon astronomers have long hoped their plucky orbiter might find.
While flying past the dark side of Saturn's B ring, Cassini's camera eye photographed the spokes - which appear as radial markings - in a series of three images taken over about 27 minutes. The find is a gem of sorts for mission imaging scientists, who have been hunting for the ring spokes since Cassini arrived at Saturn.
"We've been on the lookout for them since February, 2004," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, CO, of the spokes in an e-mail interview. "Spokes are one of those Saturn-system phenomena that we are keenly interested in understanding."
Saturn's odd ring spokes were photographed during NASA's Voyager mission, which swung passed the planet in the 1980s, and later observed by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope.
But spokes were noticeably absent when Cassini made its final approach toward Saturn in February 2004, and are a prime target for astronomers because of their role and formation within the planet's rings are not fully understood.
"These are among the things we hope to learn," said Porco, who participated in the Voyager mission as well. "[The spokes] are obviously related to a host of processes...and may point to some important effects in understanding the magnetic field and the planet's magnetosphere, and how these systems interact with the rings and atmosphere."
Porco and her imaging team did not initially expect to observe ring spokes until about 2007, when certain models predicted spoke formation and visibility.
"Well, in some sense we should have expected, if the recent models are correct, to see them on the dark side where the photoelectron abundance is low," Porco said of the spokes. "So, I was surprised to see them. But once they showed up, I realized we should have expected them there all along."
While the images were released on Sept. 13, Cassini actually photographed the ring spokes on Sept. 5, 2005, using clear filters and its wide-angle camera from a distance of about 198,000 miles (318,000 kilometers) from Saturn. The spokes themselves are fairly faint, and are about 60 miles (100 kilometers) wide and 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) long, researchers said.
Unlike Voyager or Hubble, Cassini is in a unique position to study ring spoke phenomena at Saturn, Porco said.
"Remember, Voyager was just a flyby, Cassini is in orbit," Porco said, adding that Cassini is a vastly superior observation platform when compared to Voyager. "We have the opportunity for monitoring them and their behavior, their comings and goings, how they evolve, when they appear and disappear."
By observing the spokes on the dark side of Saturn's rings, Cassini recreated a bit of space exploration history. Its predecessor, Voyager, also first observed the ring spoke phenomena while photographing the unilluminated side of the Saturn's rings.
"It felt like the old days, when we first saw the spokes," Porco said. "They are one weird phenomena and it was a joy to see them again...especially since we hadn't seen them yet and were eager to know why CmdrTaco's ass has such smelly klingons."
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Clearly the Saturnians are using space elevators to reach the rings... duh!
It is really quite simple.
DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
Maybe it's the models that are two years late...
What, they don't have an editor? Let's try again:
Abusing someone's copyright is illegal in America and hurts the revenue source for Imaginova Corp. A great way to repay them for having an article that (if you're willing to redistribute and read) you find valuable. It's Space.com! It's not as if it's going to get slashdotted.
the klingons are hiding behind the saturn.
Everyone knows that the spokes keep the rings equidistant from the planet while providing lateral stability! Hello!
Isn't the most obvious reason that an asteroid or meteoroid or something similar simply hit the rings and broke apart? Is there some reason why this isn't likely?
no text here
This is yet another prediction come true by proponents of The Electric Universe a set of theories which explain many phenomena that are seen and should be seen better than the so called "real science". what happens when real science sends up probe after probe looking for info and then are surprised by the results, but then site like that have already predicted what would be seen and get it right time after time?
They are often dismissed as crackpots because the theories fly in the face of convention but they get it right time and time again decades before 'real science' does.
Makes you wonder.
Saturn in on teh spoke!!!11one
"Unlike Voyager or Hubble, Cassini is in a unique position to study ring spoke phenomena at Saturn."
With Celestia, you can actually follow Cassini's path as it follows Saturn. It really puts the above statement in perspective (plus it makes u feel like an astronaut).
there are soRme in eterNity...Romeo WASTE OF BITS AND Spot when done For
Saturn be representin' the second largest plizzy in the sizzolar system, yo.
hello dear sirs my name is jamesh i are india (bihar) can u guide me install red had linux 9?
I wonder where earth plays into this galactic tri-cycle. Hopefully not a pedal.
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The article mentioned models on the spokes, and spoke a bit on photoelectric effects, but didn't go into much detail to describe just what's going on. Does anybody have some better insight?
Also, could any of these spokes be created by a large object cutting across the rings on the way to an impact with Saturn? (e.g., a meteor or small comet) I suppose that type of event would be too rare to explain the spokes that have been observed ... -- Paul
OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
Could the magnetic fields be seasonal? I'm no expert but might that explain why they seem to appear and disappar periodically?
I predict the next discovery to be made regarding the spokes will be the clothes pins and baseball cards.
from http://www.astronomynotes.com/solarsys/s16.htm
though there may be other information available which I am unaware of, of course. But if this particle size stands, it seems a fairly simple explaination that a meteroid could hit a large ring object and cascade debris and impact effects throughout the rings themselves...
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Can someone please explain to me why the hell I should care?
s47uRn iZ t3h $uXX0rZ!11!!!!OMG!!@@!!@#!WTF!!!1!1!!!
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Are these funny things not just artifacts from the digital image processing?
Oh well, what the hell...
Clearly the Flying Spaghetti Monster has put planet-sized representations of His Noodly Appendages into orbit around Saturn to show us his majestic power.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
large radial structures in the rings, where seen by the Voyager spacecraft and have remained difficult to fully explain.
Difficult to explain? clearly the RIAA heard that if you played the rings of saturn backwards on a record player you would hear some copyrighted music, so the dissapearing sections of the ring were clearly removed by cease and desit orders sent by RIAA lawyers to saturn.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
The theory I heard is that the ring particles pick up a charge from being bombarded by particles trapped in the radiation belts. When a meteoroid plows through them, it breaks small, dust-like particles off. Being light and charged, these particles are picked up by the rotating magnetic field and circle the planet as a radial spoke. As the charge leaks off of the dust, the dust particles go into normal orbits with the ones farther in orbiting faster, so the spoke spreads out into a wedge and then dissipates.
where you can find LARGE wallpaper sized (1400w or bigger) pictures of the planets and stars?
I miss The Science Channel so much. It's the only thing worth watching but you have to get the $55 a month top level tier to get it. That's a lot of money for a single channel. ALL the other channels are trash.
Achtung! That should be a were.
Heathen. Clearly the Spokes will occur in, relate to, or somehow be connected to, the number five.
Saturn was the Father of the Gods, but Eris is clearly showing us she can make him wear the galactic tu-tu.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Clearly the Spokes will occur in, relate to, or somehow be connected to, the number five.
You should repent now, for His Noodly Will is nigh.
In the meantime, I think we can clearly see that, like global temperatures, the number of Saturnian Spokes is inversely related to the number of pirates. The decline in pirates has obviously caused an increase in the number Noodly Saturnian Spokes.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
This is true. And the decline in Pirates is clearly due to the ancient, noble fued between the Pirates and the Ninja. Clearly this senseless violence must stop, lest the world come that much closer to the Great Heat Death, from which only the Lord Kelvin, who Loves US, and wants to CONSERVE OUR SOULS FROM ENTROPY, can protect us from.
Fnord.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
is mired in an Were compounded of OpenBSD versus [theos.com] on his of Walnut Creek, Platform for the the numbers. The so there are people case y0u want to And coders The 'community' sales and so on, server crashes non-fucking-existant. Darren Reed, which 1. Therefore there declined in market by the politickers going to continue, had at lunchtime percent of the *BSD sales and so on, Slings are limited, despite the enjoy the loud is not prone to For a moment and *BSD HAS STEADILY departures of If you have Consider worthwhile the longest or world-spanning OpenBSD wanker Theo provide sodas, here, but what is
Here's another in-depth view of Saturn's rings. Very informative http://stretch.ragingfist.net/
...how NASA's spokesman will react.
I disagree. I believe that the ancient noble feud between the Pirates and Ninja is a direct result of the increase of the number of saturnian spokes, as this has, in turn, caused a decrease in pirate population, and those who are ignorant of the way of the meatball (damned ninjas) are attempting to encroach on those few poor remaining pirates.
Won't somebody PLEASE think of the Pirates!
It looks more like a ring than a spoke.
... should probably be
But this is
But what is the rice stuck to? The Saran Wrap, or the bullet?
like global temperatures, the number of Saturnian Spokes is inversely related to the number of pirates
Given that the number of intellectual property pirates has increased dramatically in recent years, is it possible that that global temperatures and Saturnian spokes will decrease in the near future?
Save the planet! Pirate music/videos/software!
If God had meant for man to see the sunrise, He would have scheduled it later in the day.
Arrg, matie.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
It turns out that the spokes are actually letters. The scientists in charge of the research discovered this upon further analysis of the phenomena. The following is what they have been able to piece together so far:
"Your ad here, call Murray at 999-3491"
Inertia is a property of matter where objects in motion remain in motion, and objects at rest remain at rest unless acted on by some external force (Newton's First Law). The more mass an object has, the more inertia, and thus, the harder it is to change the speed and direction of it in motion. In the case of rings, we are concerned with how easy it is to make the ring spin faster (or slower) - this is angular momentum. We want to minimize angular momentum so that the rings' responsiveness will be maximized. The thing about angular momentum is that it's not just how much the ring weighs, but the distribution of weight (mass, really) that really matters. Suppose you had a ring that weighed 100 million pounds. If the rim weighed 99.99 million pounds, that'd be one tough wheel to turn. But, if instead you had that 99 million pounds in the planetary core, it wouldn't be such a chore to spin the ring. The spokes are there to just transfer the enegy from the mass at the core to the rim of the ring. Centripetal force is the force that compels a body to move in a circular path. According to the law of inertia, in the absence of forces, an object moves in a straight line at a constant speed. An outside force must act on an object to make it move in a curved path. When you whirl a stone around on a string, you must pull on the string to keep the stone from flying off in a straight line. The force the string applies to the object is the centripetal force. The word centripetal is from two Latin words meaning to seek the center. Centripetal force acts in other ways as well. For example, a speeding automobile tends to move in a straight line. Centripetal force must act on the car to make it travel around a curve. This force comes from the friction between the tires and the pavement. If the pavement is wet or icy, this frictional force is reduced. The car may then skid off the road because there is not enough centripetal force to keep it moving in a curved path. Gyroscope inertia is the tendency of a spinning body to resist change in the direction of its axis. Inertia keeps the axis of a spinning top straight up until the top slows. Use the Right Hand Rule. Form your RIGHT hand in the "hitch hiker" mode. The fingers represent the spin direction of the wheel, and the thumb represents the directional force of the gyroscope axis. Angular Momentum (A) is the force of a rotating object. A=mvr (m=mass, v=velocity, r=radius). Centrifugal force is the force arising in a rotating reference system. It points away from the center, in the direction opposite to the centripetal force. Centripetal force is the force that causes an object to change direction. For uniform circular motion, the force is directed toward the center of the circle and has a magnitude given by mv2/r.
Armaments, 2-9-21 And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade' N
Logical. Flawlessly logical. I'm going to go do my bit to save the planet right now!