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Age of the rings
I've asked this before, but never had an answer.
In "2001: A Space Odyssey" Arthur Clarke writes "As long ago as 1945, a British astronomer had pointed out that the rings were ephemeral; gravitational forces were at work which would soon destroy them. Taking this argument backwards in time, it therefore followed that they had been created only recently - a mere two or three million years ago". Who was the British astronomer, and where did he say this? He also has an interesting passage about the structure of the rings. "There were at least fifty subdivisions or boundaries, where there were distinct changes in the brightness of the planet's gigantic halo. It was as if Saturn was surrounded by scores of gigantic hoops." Of course we now know there are thousands of subdivisions, but it looks as though someone saw or predicted a complex structure long before Voyager showed us. -- What have they got to hide? Release the full Beagle 2 report. Remove spam and invalid from address to reply. |
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On Fri, 2 Jul 2004 19:59:20 +0100, in uk.sci.astronomy , Jonathan
Silverlight wrote: I've asked this before, but never had an answer. In "2001: A Space Odyssey" Arthur Clarke writes "As long ago as 1945, a British astronomer had pointed out that the rings were ephemeral; " As long ago as 1857 Maxwell showed they could only be stable if composed of particles. Beyond that, its been prettyy much assumed since forever that tehy could not be permanent. Either way I can't find any evidence of anyone saying what Clarke suggests. It is of course quite true, except that the latest thinking is that the rings are probably a few hundred million years old, and continually break up and reform as gravitational forces work for and against their formation. Gravitational forces are currently keeping them in place. -- Mark McIntyre CLC FAQ http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html CLC readme: http://www.angelfire.com/ms3/bchambless0/welcome_to_clc.html ----== Posted via Newsfeed.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==---- http://www.newsfeed.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 100,000 Newsgroups ---= 19 East/West-Coast Specialized Servers - Total Privacy via Encryption =--- ----== Posted via Newsfeed.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==---- http://www.newsfeed.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 100,000 Newsgroups ---= 19 East/West-Coast Specialized Servers - Total Privacy via Encryption =--- |
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Wasn't it Jonathan Silverlight who wrote:
He also has an interesting passage about the structure of the rings. "There were at least fifty subdivisions or boundaries, where there were distinct changes in the brightness of the planet's gigantic halo. It was as if Saturn was surrounded by scores of gigantic hoops." Of course we now know there are thousands of subdivisions, but it looks as though someone saw or predicted a complex structure long before Voyager showed us. I'm sure that it would be possible to make this determination by observing the light curve of a star that passes behind the rings, but I can't seem to find any hard evidence of anyone actually doing it. People have been observing such events since 9 February 1917, so there's plenty of opportunity for someone to have plotted the light curve and counted the number of changes in brightness. -- Mike Williams Gentleman of Leisure |
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