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Saturn's Rings May Be Very Old
Kristina from Science News writes "Combining computer simulations with data about the way starlight shines through Saturn's rings suggests the individual grains are big and thus could have been around a good 4 billion years, not the mere 10 million to 100 million previously suspected. What may have thrown earlier observations off is the chance that the grains aren't evenly distributed, but clump here and spread out there."
Saturn was more faithful than Zeus in the mythology, it makes sense that it would have had its ring for a while.
that Saturn's rings are governed by Shepherd Moons.
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
Uranus jokes in: 3, 2, 1...
Why would they think they would necessarily be smooth. With the moons circling, comets flying by, Jupiter swinging around every so often. I'm surprised they're as evenly distributed as they are.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
this just in, scientists also found out that the solar system might also very old
FTA:
"If the rings were really as old as Esposito suggests, then the moons would be much farther away than they are and the A ring would have fallen into the B ring, he says."
I don't know anything about the moon distances or rings, but isn't it possible that the rings were formed over time?
The outer rings could be much older than the inner rings, for example, and as they age they move outwards and are replaced by new rings formed by impacts.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
then who knows whats floating around in those rings, there might be some good clues to the nature of this star systems construction in there...
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
> Oh, I took a ride, on a Gemini Spacecraft! And I thought about you!
Bowie, although I think it's "trip" not "ride".
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Could they be older than McCain?
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Space could be very big.
Most people aren't thought about after they're gone. "I wonder where Rob got the plutonium" is better than most get.
Fortunately, none of this invalidates my copious knowledge of the Kronos system gleaned from Grant Callin's novels. Whew.
Skilled in differentiating ravens from a writing desks.
Seems to me that the previous speculations were formed from non-existence data. "Now that we have actually taken the time to do a test, we can omit our guesstamation"
1. It's not as much self-contradicting, as two different people are supporters of two different theories. One of them is obviously wrong, and they'll have to compare the evidence and find out who. In the end that's how science works.
But at any rate, it's not that theory X contradicts itself. It's just that theory X contradicts established theory Y. Or at least someone thinks he has data which contradicts theory Y, and his own theory X explains better. That's expected. If it didn't contradict anything, it wouldn't be much of a piece of news, and probably the old one would fit Occam's Razor better.
2. Well, you don't seem to understand journalism. These guys can't just tell you "X says Y", because that would violate their fucked-up notion of journalistic impartiality. They _have_ to present the opposite point of view too, even if they have to scrape the bottom of the proverbial barrel to have an opposing point of view.
Because for these guys everything is an opinion. If they feature John Jackson saying "I say your 3 percent Titanium tax goes too far!", they have to bring in Jack Johnson saying "I say your 3 percent Titanium tax doesn't go far enough!" Well, in politics those _are_ opinions, but these guys have to do the same to science articles too. If they star someone saying, "the temperature is rising", they also have to find someone who'll go "no, it's sinking!" Or viceversa. If they feature someone who says, "power lines can't cause _allergies_, silly, because that's not how your immune system works. A protein has to bind to another mollecule, see.", they also have to drag in some crackpot who'll testify how he and his dog sneeze near power lines, and he's even in a crackpot group where they all can testify that they sneeze near power lines.
Even if one or both are with degrees in gardening, bought from some fly-by-night diploma mill in Elbonia. And they can't tell you that, because that would already tell you who to believe, and that's against journalistic impartiality.
In this case it's not that bad, and it's even relevant for a change. Because I'd assume the fellow from NASA _is_ in a position to know what he's talking about. But the basic principle is the same: if X says the rings are old, they can't publish that without finding someone else who says they're new. It's just how it works. In this case they actually found a scientist for the opposing point of view. But knowing modern journalism, that's more of a happy coincidence than the rule.
3. While this may create (and does create) a lot of impression that there's a lot of controversy in science, and nobody knows anything for sure, that's really nothing lethal to science. That's how it's supposed to work. We don't know _everything_ already, or we could fire all scientists and be done with it. A theory at a given moment is just the one which best explains the existing data. When new data is found that it doesn't fully explain, we get to refine it into something better.
That's really how we moved from, say, indivisible atoms, to the raisin-pie model, to the planetary model, to the modern quantum model. Each model was good enough for a given data set, but finding more data brought it into question. Until those Rutherford, Geiger and Marsden went and shot alpha particles through a gold foil, nobody ever suspected that the positive charge is concentrated in a small nucleus. Now we know better.
The same happens here. For the data we had, the existing theory (which obviously Jeff Cuzzi represents) of new rings was good enough. Now someone found data which he thinks contradicts the existing one. It remains to be seen if he's actually right. Yes, there still is the possibility, of an "or not." But either way it's no loss. At the end of it, we'll learn a little bit more about the universe. That's the whole purpose of the exercise.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I wish they would both clump and spread there, and not here.
They're very old, astronomers just didn't realize it because they were stored in mothballs
-=Bang Bang=-
I am glad she is all happy they found this out; hopefully she gets laid or something over it. Outside of her husband and the people who decided they needed to figure this out, who cares??? What does anyone get out of whether they are 10 minutes or 10 billion years old?
Of course the are old, they were forged by the Dark Lord Sauron before his conquest of middle earth. After attempting to bind the planets to his will and failing, he figured pesky little dwarfs, elves, and humans would be a bit easier.
... The Sun may be very very hot.
#include <disclaimer.h>
#include <beer.h>
get off my rings!
Monstar L
scientists have discovered there may be old people in Korea as well.
They can be seen Only IF it is A Day Without Rain, when you can Paint the Sky with Stars.
It's actually a song written by the Legendary Stardust Cowboy (the inspiration for the Ziggy Stardust character), Bowie covered it for his Heathen album.
4 billion, not 5000. Take that, Sarah Palin!
I don't know much about the Cassini mission but I would imagine that they wouldn't want to jeopardize the probe by sending it too close to the rings where debris might damage her. You know what'd be cool though? If they could send in a reinforced probe similar to the Giotto probe that flew into Halley's Comet, send it as close to the rings as they can with a good telescope on board. I'd love to see actual close-up photos of the rings and see how accurate a prediction that artist's impression is.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Clearly they mean 6000 years?
Just because an idea is popular doesn't make it right.
I mean really... are they old?
Whod'a thunk it.
I'm not sure if that was a joke or a troll, but he really does say they are 10,000 years old
Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH
They can't be more thsn 6000 years old.
It's the original one ring.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Oh yeah, it was on Slashdot nine months ago.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
YHBT by Roger Ebert himself. See his blog post about the article and its reaction.
Joke:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/09/this_is_the_dawning_of_the_age.html
Yeah, I know, AC told me that yesterday. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=973301&cid=25138747
Honestly, if Roger Ebert thinks the general public has read enough of his personal writings to pick up that the original post was a joke, he overestimates his popularity outside of the movie critic role.
On an unrelated note, was this pure coincidence that you replied to a day old comment, or did you start reading my old stuff after I replied to you on the Oracle story?
Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH
He's a movie critic? I thought he was just some kind of fanboy.
You should know by now that there are no coincidence.....