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Saturn May Have Given Birth To a Baby Moon

Posted by Unknown on from the probably-an-alien-spacecraft dept.

astroengine (1577233) writes "NASA's Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft has imaged something peculiar on the outermost edge of the gas giant's A-ring. A bright knot, or arc, has been spotted 20 percent brighter than the surrounding ring material and astronomers are interpreting it as a gravitational disturbance caused by a tiny moon. "We have not seen anything like this before," said Carl Murray of Queen Mary University of London. 'We may be looking at the act of birth, where this object is just leaving the rings and heading off to be a moon in its own right.'"

37 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. Can I be the first to say.....? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    THAT'S NO MOON!

    1. Re:Can I be the first to say.....? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      No one's talking about Uranus.

    2. Re:Can I be the first to say.....? by JWSmythe · · Score: 3, Informative

      Nah, the Saturnians just did yet another launch.. You'd think they would have learned by now that they're really not good at it. Look at all that debris they left in orbit. That's what it's going to look like around the Earth in a few thousand years, if we don't start cleaning up after ourselves.

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
    3. Re:Can I be the first to say.....? by plover · · Score: 1, Redundant

      "I felt a disturbance in the gravitational force, as if thousands of tiny particles coalesced into a single moon and were suddenly silenced."

      --
      John
    4. Re:Can I be the first to say.....? by flyneye · · Score: 1

      Saturn, previously thought to be a planet, surprised the world by being a life-form. Scientists are scrambling to Mars where a moon size chunk of what appears to be feces expelled by the entity previously known as planet, crashed.
      Film @ 11.

      --
      *Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
  2. That's no moon! by mythosaz · · Score: 2

    Saturn already has "confirmed" moons about the length of a drag strip.... :/

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

    I wonder if this one will be that exciting.

    1. Re:That's no moon! by rmdingler · · Score: 1

      On earth the super-rich buy islands. If we get this space travel thing down, even in our own galaxy, imagine what a friggin' moon will go for?

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    2. Re:That's no moon! by king+neckbeard · · Score: 2

      Probably around 15 billion credits.

      --
      This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
    3. Re:That's no moon! by mythosaz · · Score: 1

      Republic credits? Republic credits are no good out here. I need something more real.

  3. At least momma had a ring by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    And a lovely, sparkly ring it is, too!

  4. Catastrophism by Daetrin · · Score: 1

    I'm kind of glad neither Velikovsky nor James P Hogan are still alive to blow this out or proportion. Velikovsky had a fundamentally good idea but got carried away with it, and James P Hogan wrote some good books related to the subject before his brain went soft in his old age.

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    1. Re:Catastrophism by Neon+Spiral+Injector · · Score: 1

      You think Velikovsky got carried away? John Ackerman picked up where he left off.

      But I came to leave the same comment. Well, the Velikovshy part, I didn't expect to find anyone who had read Jim's stuff. I miss him, I used to e-mail back and forth a occasionally. I do own copies of all of his books, most in hardback, and the first editions of the last dozen or so. I never had to heart to tell him that his last few were not very good.

      Anyway, here's to the new baby moon in Saturn's cradle.

    2. Re:Catastrophism by Daetrin · · Score: 1

      There are certain topics for which simplistic narratives dominate over thorough investigation and rational discourse. These include:

      (1) Anything about Velikovsky or mythology: Most people simply assume that mythology = myth. Very few people take the time to investigate any observed correspondences between the stories held by cultures -- and even when suggestions are made for scientific explanations.

      You're only half right. These days no one has a problem with proposing that myths may be based on scientific realities. There have been intriguing proposals about the relation between the myth of Atlantis and the erruption of Thera, a similar or identical link to the parting of the Red Sea, and several interesting theories about what might have inspired the various deluge mythologies.

      The problem with Velikovsky is that his proposed solutions were batshit crazy. If the Uniformitarians were insisting that 2 + 2 = 3, then Velikovsky was right that they were getting it wrong. But his proposed counter-solution was that 2 + 2 = 10000!

      We have pretty good evidence that the solar system is in a fairly stable situation in regards to the major bodies. There's certainly no astronomical record of any significant changes for the past several hundred years. (And i suspect much longer if one takes Chinese astronomical observations into account.)

      But we are supposed to believe that between about 10k years ago and approximately 1 AD, the solar system underwent a MASSIVE reconfiguration. One or more new planets were created and several planets, including Earth, significantly changed their orbits, involving several VERY close passes between those planets. Then after all those planets finished swapping places and crossing paths with each other they just settled down into a configuration that just coincidentally also could have been stable for the last several hundred million years, and then haven't budged an inch (metaphorically speaking) since then.

      The other theories i mentioned in the first paragraph have good physical evidence to indicate that they are at least plausible. As far as i'm aware Velikovsky had no physical evidence supporting his claims. In fact the full version of his theory is something like "If, in total contradiction to all present appearances, the solar system of a few thousand years ago was an entirely chaotic system, AND we rewrite several portions of recorded history to make points in different timelines line up better, THEN we might be able to explain certain myths." I'm sorry, but Occam's Razor just does not work that way.

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      This Space Intentionally Left Blank
    3. Re:Catastrophism by WasteOfAmmo · · Score: 1

      I have to say I miss Hogan also. My wife and I have also read most of Hogan's books and thoroughly enjoyed them. We are currently introducing our youngest to Hogan by reading Code of the Lifemaker as a family. His writing was not as good near the end and in all he did not publish near enough for my liking. I've yet to find a similar author to replace him in my library. If you have any suggestions I'd be interested in hearing them.

      That all said, I had not heard of Velikovsky or John Ackerman... will have to check them out.

    4. Re:Catastrophism by Neon+Spiral+Injector · · Score: 1

      Velokovsky (and Ackerman) wrote about the birth of Venus, and Mars waging war on the Earth as an actual hypothesis as to how the solar system got to how we view it today. Hogan, as was often his style, took that idea and wove a fictional story around it.

      I wish I had recommendations of other lesser known authors of a similar style, but I've never encountered any. For the most part I probably read the same books that most techies do, Asimov, Gibson, Stephenson. It was just a fluke that my mother bought me the fourth book in Hogan's Giants series for Christmas one year, and despite not having read the previous three books I was hooked.

    5. Re:Catastrophism by Daetrin · · Score: 1

      Doesn't a gas giant "giving birth" to a moon count? Hot Venus? Radio signal from Jupiter?

      No, it doesn't. Velikovsky theorized that Venus was ejected from Jupiter. We have no good theories for how or why a gas giant would spontaneously produce and then eject a smaller terrestrial planet, not to mention no physical evidence that i've seen that it has ever actually happened.

      What is going on here is that some of the material in Saturn's rings has accreted together into a moonlet. It's already been theorized that that's how at least some of Saturn's other 100+ moonlets were formed. The only reason that this is at all a surprise is that A: there's still enough material left in the rings after forming all the other moonlets and B: that we're caught it in the middle of the process . And as for (B), i haven't seen any estimates of how long it's been going on, but i suspect that it's been taking place slowly over millions of years, and we're only seeing it now because we've finally gotten sensitive enough instruments in the right position to detect it.

      If so then in one case we have a tiny moon, one of over 100, being formed by a known method over a period of millions of years. And in the other case we have the 2nd largest terrestrial planet, one of just 8 planets total, being formed by an entirely unknown method over the period of a couple thousand years.

      The first case provides absolutely no support for the second case.

      As for "Hot Venus", that doesn't really provide any evidence for Velikovsky unless you don't believe the greenhouse effect exists.

      And i don't know what radio signals from Jupiter have to do with Velikovsky's theories of planetary formation, so i can't really address that.

      Even if you doubt his line of reasoning, his predictions are very interesting. Perhaps you can interpret his narrative as, at the very least, a very productive muse.

      Oh sure, they're _interesting_. But lots of people make interesting predictions from random theories that aren't based on any solid evidence. Some of those people we call science fiction and fantasy authors, and others we call crackpots, depending on whether they think their "interesting predictions" are actually the truth or just a form of entertainment.

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  5. hold on, here by Tablizer · · Score: 2

    It's just a big zit; relax

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  6. The Birth of a Moon... by l0ungeb0y · · Score: 1

    ... or a Space Baby?

    Wasn't a monolith shaped object spotted on Mars recently?

    1. Re:The Birth of a Moon... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      ,,,at least she got some rings first...

    2. Re:The Birth of a Moon... by VernonNemitz · · Score: 2

      I thought the entire ring system was inside Roche's Limit, and as a result it should be impossible for a moon to form there.

    3. Re:The Birth of a Moon... by Convector · · Score: 1

      Not the whole ring system. Only the A-D rings are within the Roche limit. But the phenomenon discussed here is happening in the A-ring, so this limitation does indeed apply. I don't understand how a moon could accrete here.

    4. Re:The Birth of a Moon... by artfulshrapnel · · Score: 1

      Also to my understanding, the nature of Roche's limit is that it only affects objects big enough and with enough spin to experience gravitational-based tidal forces. that suggests that objects below/around that size might temporarily form until they collect enough mass and spin to begin experiencing those forces, after which point they'd break up again?

  7. Awwww by imikem · · Score: 4, Funny

    They're so cute, when they're still little.

    --
    Perscriptio in manibus tabellariorum est.
    1. Re:Awwww by Tablizer · · Score: 2

      so cute

      until you have to change the first diaper

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      Table-ized A.I.
    2. Re:Awwww by Chewbacon · · Score: 1

      :shakes head: then people flush them down the toilet...

      --
      Chewbacon
      The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
    3. Re:Awwww by McLoud · · Score: 1

      My GF's aunt used to say that when they are little's, you feel like you want to eat them. Once they get to the adolescence, you wonder why you didn't

      --
      sign(c14n(envelop(this)), x509)
  8. and you'll go blind by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Funny

    See, this is what happens when rings are knotty.

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    Table-ized A.I.
    1. Re:and you'll go blind by Agripa · · Score: 1

      You've a wicked sense of humor, Darth Vader!

  9. The High Council is going to be pissed! by Jmc23 · · Score: 1

    They're constantly bereating everybody about the importance of launching away from all earth sensors and then this has to happen!

    --
    Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
  10. Who's the father? by flogger · · Score: 1

    In all the mythology I read, Jupiter was always trowing his seed around.

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    ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
    "First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
    -- The Doctor, "Doctor
    1. Re:Who's the father? by WormholeFiend · · Score: 1

      Now you know what "release the kraken" really means

  11. You mean *DWARF* moon by TrollstonButterbeans · · Score: 4, Funny

    You mean *DWARF* moon. Because in order to be considered a *real* moon, it has to clear its orbit of debris.

    (Standing in solidarity with Pluto!!)

    --
    Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
    1. Re:You mean *DWARF* moon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "That is no moon" he said, while gesturing vaguely at the remains of Alderaan. "It has not cleared its orbit."

    2. Re:You mean *DWARF* moon by OhSoLaMeow · · Score: 1

      You mean *DWARF* moon. Because in order to be considered a *real* moon, it has to clear its orbit of debris.

      That's not debris. It's planetary placenta.

      --
      They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
  12. Thuktun Flishithy by rossdee · · Score: 1

    Its the Fithp

    Run for the hills

    1. Re:Thuktun Flishithy by Agripa · · Score: 1

      Maybe we spotted The Foot.

  13. Okay Saturn! Post a picture! by Chas · · Score: 1

    And everyone else post "AW! HOW CUUUUUTE!"

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    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!