Moon Builds Snowballs in Saturn Ring: Video-interesting what goes on out there!

One of Saturn’s moons is building enormous snowballs in the gas giant’s famous rings. Images from NASA’s Cassini orbiter show how icy particles in Saturn’s thin F ring clump together in snowballs up to 12 miles in diameter as the moon Prometheus swings around the ring.

VIDEO LINK:
link.brightcove.com...

“Scientists have never seen objects actually form before,” planetary scientist Carl Murray of Queen Mary, University of London said in a press release. “We now have direct evidence of that process and the rowdy dance between the moons and bits of space debris.” Murray presented the findings July 20 at the Committee on Space Research meeting in Bremen, Germany, and they appeared in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters on July 14.

The images, taken over six years of observations, show an F ring that never looks the same twice. The ring is flanked by two small “shepherd” moons, Prometheus and Pandora, which are thought to herd bits of ice and dust into the ring and give it its bow-like shape.

The new observations show that Prometheus — ironically named for the Greek figure who stole fire from the gods and brought it to mortals — is primarily responsible for building miles-wide snowballs in the ring. The potato-shaped moon, which is about 92 miles across, flies around Saturn at an orbit just outside the slower-moving F ring.

The moon laps the same spot on the ring every 68 days. The repeated tugs from the moon’s gravity slosh the particles around in a pattern of increasing complexity, letting particles build up and clump together (see animation above).

The largest of these objects are 12 miles across, and could be about as dense as Prometheus itself — about one-fourteenth the density of Earth. The objects are large enough to hold themselves together with self-gravity, and grow by pulling other particles to themselves.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/9afb20bab55c.jpg[/atsimg]
Image: A composite of 10 photos taken in July 2008 shows fan-like structures in the F ring that suggest the presence of additional objects inside the ring.
Source: www.wired.com...


This stuff just amazes me. Makes me think we know but a tiny bit of Space and it's expansion etc. I can only imagine what discoveries await us out there! I wish I could be one to go and find out what is out there.

Just think about all the stuff we now know about planets and space that is near Earth. What other odd/weird/unexplainable things will we find. Beginning to think the makers of Star Trek had more info than we knew about (publically).

Anyway, a very interesting vidoe and pic I would say. You?

Really awesome! Thanks! S&F.
I have seen the video one year ago, without the explication of this strange phenomenon on Saturn.

reply to post by anon72


Thanks for posting.

But...'fan like gaps' in the ring, does suggest something is there disrupting it.

It could be a 12 mile wide, clumpy snowball...or it could be a gargantuan ship, as imaged and of which photo's are available..the same ships that have been reported on in detail, with slides shown and examined, on the Denmark Exopolitics lecture.

They're appear to be assuming it's conglomerated ice particles..although of course, it very well may be exactly what they think it might be.

A strange coincidence with all the talk of massive ships parked off Saturn, and around Sol.

garbage explaination, they can't explain gravity on earth but they somehow can explain things that are billion miles away ?

Originally posted by spikey
reply to post by anon72

 

Thanks for posting.

But...'fan like gaps' in the ring, does suggest something is there disrupting it.

It could be a 12 mile wide, clumpy snowball...or it could be a gargantuan ship, as imaged and of which photo's are available..the same ships that have been reported on in detail, with slides shown and examined, on the Denmark Exopolitics lecture.

They're appear to be assuming it's conglomerated ice particles..although of course, it very well may be exactly what they think it might be.

A strange coincidence with all the talk of massive ships parked off Saturn, and around Sol.

This reminds me of the plot of the book "Footfall" by Larry Niven, where a race of aliens park their craft around Saturn while they prepare an asteroid to drop on Earth to conquer the planet (a Dinosaur killer).
Having said that, the images are very striking.

Roy

reply to post by aspx


I tend to think like this more often than not.

I can't help it.

I said it before, until we get Feet on the Ground on these planets/moons and any other possible thing, they don't know-for sure.

Please lets get to these places that are close by-ASAP!