Like the fist of an angry god (Did something just hit Saturn's rings?)

Discover Magazine ^ | 8/9/09

[LibWhacker]

Deep in the outer realms of our solar system, well over a billion kilometers away, something bizarre happened at Saturn’s F ring.

I mean, seriously: what the he** happened here?

Cassini image of something punching through Saturn’s F ring

This is one of the latest pictures returned from the remarkable human achievement that is the Cassini spacecraft, a probe the size of a school bus that has been orbiting the ringed planet since 2004. It’s returned one incredible picture after another, and lately — as Saturn’s orbit has brought it to a point where the rings are nearly edge-on to the Sun — things have gotten not only spectacular but also really weird.

The rings are incredibly thin, only a few meters in thickness despite being hundreds of thousands of kilometers across. Over the past few months, as the Sun shines almost straight into the rings (instead of down on them), every bump and irregularity sticks out like, well, like a tree in the desert. Weird gravitational effects from Saturn’s fleet of moons tune and resonate the countless particles making up the rings, creating beautiful waves and ripples.

But this, this is something new. Zoom of Cassini image of something punching through Saturn’s F ring

It’s not exactly clear what’s going on here, even in this slightly zoomed shot. But it looks for all the world - or worlds — like some small object on an inclined orbit has punched through Saturn’s narrow F ring, bursting out from underneath, and dragging behind it a wake of particles from the rings. The upward-angled structure is definitely real, as witnessed by the shadow it’s casting on the ring material to the lower left. And what’s with the bright patch right where this object seems to have slammed in the rings? Did it shatter millions of icy particles, revealing their shinier interior material, making them brighter? Clearly, something awesome and amazing happened here.

My first inclination (haha! Inclination! As always, I slay me) is to say that there isn’t enough material in the rings to create what amounts to a hydrodynamic wake behind a moving object. When you move through air you leave a wake behind you, but there are gazillions of particles per cubic centimeter in the Earth’s air at sea level. I would think that even in Saturn’s ring, the density of particles wouldn’t be enough to support a phenomenon like this.

But apparently, I’m wrong. Without doing a full-blown hydrodynamic calculation it’s hard to say what’s possible and what isn’t. Cassini scientists are currently doing just that, in order to better understand what this odd image is trying to tell us.

And I have to wonder: is this a common occurrence? Is this object on an orbit that intersects the rings so that it plunges up through them and then again down into them every time it circles Saturn? If so, how does that affect the rings overall, especially over millions of years?

Or was this a singular event, some small object whose orbit was affected by a nearby massive moon, changing its path, putting it on a collision course with Saturn’s mighty and vast ring system? That seems awfully unlikely…

… but when it comes to this weird, weird place, I’ve learned my intuition is monumentally inadequate. Nature, it turns out, has a far greater imagination than any mere human. We are fated, I think, to watch Nature unfold before us and try to figure it out after the fact.

But oh, isn’t that the joy of science?

[Spartan79]

No big deal. Just a tramp Saturnian freighter going into warp drive a little early on a routine run to Arcturus.

[autumnraine]

Who is this funny, yet brainy (and very very attractive with those two qualities) author?

[PIF]

There also was a very old article reporting a distinct radio source in the B ring. The Blivit in the B Ring it was called. I think this appeared back when the internet consisted of AOL and not much else.

[Cherrybark]

Seemed fishy to me so I wrapped it in a tiny URL, quoted the headline and sent it to flag@whitehouse.gov

[SunkenCiv]

Wow, thanks FrogMom!

Looks like a comet in the background, behind the rings, probably millions of miles -- but if so, why the long tail?

Something hit Jupiter, something may have hit Saturn's rings -- could be that these are commonplace events that we're only learning about now because of fairly new observational technology.

Or, more likely, the Solar System is about to pass through a great big debris field, just when I managed to get a new job, and the Earth is going to be destroyed. I blame Murphy.

· join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic ·

[jellybean]

This image and others like it (see PIA11663) are only possible around the time of Saturn's equinox which occurs every half-Saturn-year (equivalent to about 15 Earth years).

HA! I'd be getting close to 4 years old (3.7333...) if I lived on Saturn.

[roaddog727]

” Without doing a full-blown hydrodynamic calculation it’s hard to say what’s possible and what isn’t. Cassini scientists are currently doing just that, in order to better understand what this odd image is trying to tell us.

More likely Gravitic effects causing the perturbation than hydro-dynamic.

But hey, I’m just a dumb-a@@ engineer.

[neverdem]

thanks, worrisome bfl

[LibWhacker]

Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.

[autumnraine]

Oh good GRIEF!!!!

Phil is going to kick my butt. Don’t tell him I asked that question. I mean he’d be happy to know I still think he’s funny and I always told him he was smart... but to not recognize his article.

Oh boy.

[LibWhacker]

My lips are sealed. :-)

My fault anyway for not posting the author. Got lazy when I didn’t see a byline near the title.

Cool that you know him, wow. Do you work at NASA? Are you an astronomer?

[autumnraine]

Noooo, I only slobber at the genius that are astronomers.

Actually it’s a wierd way I know him, and it’s on two fronts.

One is through the James Randi Educational Foundation as he is now runs that organization, and also through Skeptics magazine in which a friend of mine is an editor. Also, a friend of mine in Ireland is an astronomer of amazing reputation (he is the only non-muslim to enter Mecca to set up their satellite tower) and so the link is there as well. He skips around all over the world to see various space things from different points on the planet, but when he’s here I try to see him. He should be at Dragon Con Labor Day weekend!

Phil was on the short list to being the Science Advisor to President Obama, although I don’t discuss politics with him. He’s more interested in making sure funding remains for NASA and programs out there, not sure how happy he is with the amount Obama is sending there now.

By the way, you want to lie awake at night worrying?? Buy “Death from the sky”. Good LORD there is some stuff in there that will make you think why bother getting up in the morning!!! LOL

But I should have known with the humor who it was. He’s funnier in person. Never met a funny Einstein type before him.

[AFreeBird]

AstroB4L8r

[ForGod'sSake]

Whoa, did you see that???!!!

[Robert A Cook PE]

How does “Skeptics” magazine treat AGW? Seems that The Zero would demand a full-religious fervor for ecotheism to be appointed anything affecting his “science” budgets.

[autumnraine]

Skeptics are skeptical of everything... except Global Warming it seems. Sad.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks again LibWhacker, here's a working image link (the old one died).