Posted on 03/30/2016 3:39:17 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
New research suggests that some of Saturn's icy moons, as well as its famous rings, might be modern adornments. Their dramatic birth may have taken place a mere hundred million years ago, more recent than the reign of many dinosaurs...
While Saturn's rings have been known since the 1600s, there's still debate about their age. The straightforward assumption is that they are primordial -- as old as the planet itself, which is more than four billion years. However, in 2012, French astronomers found that tidal effects -- the gravitational interaction of the inner moons with fluids deep in Saturn's interior -- are causing them to spiral to larger orbital radii comparatively quickly. The implication, given their present positions, is that these moons, and presumably the rings, are recent phenomena...
By comparing present orbital tilts and those predicted by computer simulations, the researchers could learn how much the orbits of Saturn's moons grew. It turns out that, for some of the most important satellites -- Tethys, Dione and Rhea -- the orbits are less dramatically altered than previously thought. The relatively small orbital tilts indicate that they haven't crossed many orbital resonances, meaning that they must have formed not far from where they are now...
According to the team's analysis, these would move the satellite by the small amount indicated by the simulations in only about 100 million years. This would date the formation of the major moons of Saturn, with the exception of more distant Titan and Iapetus, to the relatively recent Cretaceous Period, the era of the dinosaurs.
(Excerpt) Read more at scientificcomputing.com ...
Well thank you kindly! If’n I’m going up to The Pearly Gates do you want me to be puttin’ in a good word for you?(If’n it’s down yonder I’m bound, don’t you worry none. I know how to keep my mouth shut.)
But they still look fabulous!
A blink of an eye in geologic time.
What would be even more mind boggling would be the Earth developing rings. ... Oh, wait. It is growing rings. Space junk.
It depends on which dinosaurs you bring back, the ones that lived between 100mya and 65mya would have been around when the rings were there. Of course, no one can see these rings without instruments that dinosaurs never used.
Single Planets (Put a Ring On It).
I wonder if any dinosaurs ever vacationed on the moons of Saturn?
One way to reduce the cost of Obamacare is for people to take responsibility in providing end of life care at home when possible. My mother and husband did NOT want to die in a hospital so I cared for them at home until they died. In the last week or two a hospice nurse came in to check vital signs and give me instruction and support. My mother at 89 was dying of congestive heart failure as her artificial mitral pig valve was failing. My husband died of Alzheimers. A large percentage of health care costs occur in the last few months of life if hospitalization is the course followed. My father had a stroke and was hospitalized for 3 weeks. We thought he would recover and come home but he did not. I was shocked at the size of the medical bills.
;’) Loch Ness monsters.
Pretty good video comparing rotational 2D solar system like we were always taught as kids to the vortex model of how it really does.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jHsq36_NTU
Here’s a short video of them partying...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONRDwJlCpn4
(full money back guarantee if this doesn’t at least make you smile)
Thanks Abathar.
Thanks for the ping. The electric universe and star water bump.
Extra to APoD -- just in case I'd not yet done that.
But are they as old as Helen Thomas?.........................
I read once, long ago in some astronomy book, the our Moon, though presently getting farther away, slowly, will at some point begin an inward spiral that will inevitably get to the point of tearing apart through gravity and Earth will have a set of rings!..........................
The Moon's on the way out -- but if there's sufficient energy left in the Earth's rotation, and the tidal transfer of momentum is effective over the greater distance, the period when the Moon begins escape will lead to some very trying times here on the good Earth.
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