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Saturn's Moons and Rings May Be Younger Than The Dinosaurs (space.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the the-jurassic-period dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: Some of Saturn's icy moons may have been formed after many dinosaurs roamed the Earth. New computer modeling of the Saturnian system suggests the rings and moons may be no more than 100 million years old. A new computer model suggests that the Saturnian moons Tethys, Dione and Rhea haven't seen the kinds of changes in their orbital tilts that are typical for moons that have lived in the system and interacted with other moons over long periods of time. In other words, these appear to be very young moons. "Moons are always changing their orbits. That's inevitable," Matija Cuk, principal investigator at the SETI Institute and one of the authors of the new research, said in a statement. "But that fact allows us to use computer simulations to tease out the history of Saturn's inner moons. Doing so, we find that they were most likely born during the most recent 2 percent of the planet's history."

11 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. TL;DR by NotQuiteReal · · Score: 1

    We're doomed.

    How square are oranges?

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    This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
  2. Don't be silly.... by sconeu · · Score: 1

    Everyone knows that Saturn's rings were created when the monolith aliens blew up a moon to build the Star Gate. They're only 3 million years old.

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    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  3. Crasho by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    A big smash-up of some kind probably happened fairly recently to form the rings and some of the moons. I suspect 2 medium-sized moons collided, or a moon and visiting asteroid.

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    Table-ized A.I.
    1. Re:Crasho by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      That may explain the rings, but probably not new moons, unless it was a really large moon.

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      Table-ized A.I.
  4. Anything that predates the Bible... by EzInKy · · Score: 1

    ...has no meaning. Of course Jihadists will kill anyone who questions the authoritary of their good books.

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    Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
  5. How did they calculate? by WoOS · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I thought the general three body problem was already intractable. Now they did it for 62?

    1. Re:How did they calculate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Numerically. There is a family of integrators designed for integrating over long times that are stable and conserve the energy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symplectic_integrator.

    2. Re:How did they calculate? by osu-neko · · Score: 4, Informative

      In the physical literature about the n-body problem (n 3), sometimes reference is made to the impossibility of solving the n-body problem (via employing the above approach). However, care must be taken when discussing the 'impossibility' of a solution, as this refers only to the method of first integrals (compare the theorems by Abel and Galois about the impossibility of solving algebraic equations of degree five or higher by means of formulas only involving roots).

      See here.

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      "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
    3. Re:How did they calculate? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      Only to snobby pure mathematicians. You can't actually solve it, but you can come 'close enough' with a finite-time-interval approximation. The only limitation on accuracy is how much processor time you've got to throw at the problem.

  6. What happened... by messymerry · · Score: 1

    What happened during the prior 4 billion years? Maybe these moonlets are constantly being born and subsequently torn apart...

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    Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
  7. Dinosaurs still do roam the earth. by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2

    We are pretty good in the skies too.