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The Strangest Moon In the Solar System
StartsWithABang writes Moons in our Solar System — at least the ones that formed along with the planets — all revolve counterclockwise around their planetary parents, with roughly uniform surfaces orbiting in the same plane as their other moons and rings. Yet one of Saturn's moon's, Iapetus, is unique, with a giant equatorial ridge, an orbital plane that doesn't line up, and one half that's five times brighter than the other. While the first two are still mysteries, the last one has finally been solved.
Linking to Medium is the new linking to LiveJournal.
Viewed from which side? Counterclockwise does not apply here.
Every single hash-laden cloudfront link is a tracker. No thanks, Medium.
It's HUGE.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Yet one of Saturn's moon's, Iapetus, is unique
Aren't they all unique?
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
I found this article to be rather long winded in order to create a story with suspense.
The moon has a side facing away from Saturn which is darker then the side facing saturn. It seems to be due to collecting dust from a larger ring that is on the border of its orbit.
Done, saved you a long and pointless naritive.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The fun is that in 2001, the bright side of Iapetus was sculpted, with the monolith in the middle. In reality the dark side is sculpted from passage through the dust ring.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
right it is a egg, of a space dinosaur.
that is why it has a ridge.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
We aren't all using tablets or phones. Looks like crap on my laptop.
As for the article, if you are going to casually use words like "sublimate" without definition, it means your target audience is sophisticated enough that you don't need to write using a breathless, made for reality TV, annoyingly *excited* tone.
POssibly the moon is formed from 2 bodies colliding and before it could completely settle down into a round shape it froze with that ridge remaining?
Dude... Do you think that when Pink Floyd sang about the Dark side of the moon, they were really talking about Iapetus?
and unreadable hipster websites
This!
By all means ignore the GP post and RTFA. Lots of cool pictures and chat about how Phoebe is special and how ridges from old impact craters on Iapetus are really old.
Unless you're not all that into space stuff... then I'd understand if you might find TFA "long-winded" and would probably appreciate having more time for reading buzzfeed "articles".
was Kieth.
They promise to only look at our metadata, not the content of our cell calls and digital pictures.
POssibly the moon is formed from 2 bodies colliding and before it could completely settle down into a round shape it froze with that ridge remaining?
Nah, it's clearly an equatorial mass driver that was covered over with rock to keep it safe from meteorites.
Actually that's a mistranslation, it should be:
They promise to only look at our metadata, not the content of our glial cells and mental pictures.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
In one of the books on the Making of 2001 Kubrick it was hard to obtain the F/X artisitc effect he wanted of Saturn and Iapetus, so he switched to a black-gate orbiting Jupiter. The movie and the book were co-made at the same time, mostly agreeing. Jupiter is one choice because its the second largest thing in the Solar System. Clark instread, chose something so odd, that could not be natural.
It was a poor attempt at a Star Wars reference...
Actually, it's the embryonic stage of a Titan. Hopefully Iapetus will survive it's birth and not shatter into a second ring system...
http://marsandmore.com - Posters of space, spacecraft, and astronomy.
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)
Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors .. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.
Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!
Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.
**>>BELCH
My armchair theory for the ridge would be it wasn't always tidally locked, and plowed through a significant amount of debris material along that plane originally. Eventually becoming tidally locked, and the larger particulate had been mostly thinned out. And the tilt happening as the rotation failed, much like a top wobbles and falls over after losing momentum.
This is wrong "Moons in our Solar System" should be either "Moons in the Solar System" or "Moons in our star system". I hate reading Sci-Fi books that has multiple solar systems in our galaxy. Tim S.
Considering Venus the only other planet sized similarly to Earth in this solar system, and that we don't know of any exomoons yet, it seems premature to declare it that unusual.
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Why people bother with Star Wars references remains beyond me. Like - it was a movie in the 1970s or so, with an unending stream of sequels and prequels and reboots and regurgitations. Do people still watch these things? If I wanted an unending sequences of prequels and reboots, I'd watch a Bond movie.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
named Dahak.
That's true, but if you tell anyone else I will just claim I was kidding with you... 8-)
Indeed.
This makes me think of "Foundation and Earth" by Isaac Asimov.
~30,000 years in the future, and they're looking for the mythical homeworld of humanity, known as "Earth".
But the legends about the huge moon and the gas giant with a huge ring system are obviously just legends, exaggerated over the milennia, and should not be taken seriously...
It is the same as people who keep shouting 'oh my gawdd', while that is just a very old-fashioned book from about two thousand years ago. Some things just make it into classics.