Posted on 01/21/2007 8:31:26 PM PST by SunkenCiv
The sun, it turns out, isn't yellow. The earth isn't a perfect sphere. Asteroids can and do have moons. Saturn will soon (in 100 million years, anyway) be shorn of its rings. The equinoxes do not consist of exactly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. Intergalactic space is so empty of matter that a random cube of it, "200,000 kilometers on a side, contains about the same number of atoms as the air that fills the usable volume of your refrigerator." ...Dark energy, dark matter, the failures of string theory, the origins of life -- Tyson happily admits that plenty of mysteries await exploration.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Death by Black Hole:
and Other Cosmic Quandaries
by Neil deGrasse Tyson
"will soon (in 100 million years, anyway) be shorn of its rings."
It's Bush's fault.
That, or global warming.
Just like Hillary.
Anthony Doerr is the author of two books, The Shell Collector, and About Grace. His fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including the O. Henry Prize Stories, Paris Review, Atlantic Monthly, Zoetrope: All Story, Tin House, and The Best American Short Stories. The Shell Collector, a volume of eight short stories, was published in 2002 and won the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, two O. Henry Prizes, the Rome Prize, and the Ohioana Book Award. It was a New York Times Notable Book and an American Library Association Book of the Year. About Grace, his first novel, was published last year and was named one of the Best Books of 2004 by the Washington Post, won the Ohioana Book Award again, and was a finalist for the PEN USA fiction award.
That's the guy who hates Pluto!
Guess that good be good or bad for interstellar travel. I'm thinking bad -- not enough particles to harvest for fuel but just enough to cause damage when traveling at 9/10s the speed of light.
She's not very silent.
Thanks. I'd already come to the conclusion that he was a dumbass, but was keeping silent before. ;')
SaturnThey range in size from a centimeter or so to several meters. A few kilometer-sized objects are also likely.
by Bill Arnett
The Nine Planets
Saturn's rings are extraordinarily thin: though they're 250,000 km or more in diameter they're less than one kilometer thick. Despite their impressive appearance, there's really very little material in the rings -- if the rings were compressed into a single body it would be no more than 100 km across.
The ring particles seem to be composed primarily of water ice, but they may also include rocky particles with icy coatings.
Voyager confirmed the existence of puzzling radial inhomogeneities in the rings called "spokes" which were first reported by amateur astronomers (left). Their nature remains a mystery, but may have something to do with Saturn's magnetic field...
The origin of the rings of Saturn (and the other jovian planets) is unknown. Though they may have had rings since their formation, the ring systems are not stable and must be regenerated by ongoing processes, perhaps the breakup of larger satellites. The current set of rings may be only a few hundred million years old.
You're thinking of a Bussard Ramjet?
Yes.
Saturn's rings may be youngWhen the Voyager spacecraft swept past Saturn, they radioed back photos of a complex, very dynamic system of rings -- thousands of rings. Studies of these rings have led some astronomers to wonder if they are really as old as Saturn itself. Two lines of thinking suggest a recent origin:
by William R. Corliss
May-Jun 1985
(1) The rings are composed of both light material (very likely water ice) and dark material (probably rocks and dust). The rocky fragments, according to the prevailing nebular theory, should have condensed early in solar-system history, and then been swept gravitationally into the planet as they were slowed by friction with the uncondensed nebular material. Yet, dark material is still in the rings. (2) The incessant bombardment of the rings by meteorites should have pulverized the rings, sending fragments and vaporized material in all directions. In just 10 million years the rings should have been largely erased. They are still there.
(Cuzzi, Jeffrey N.; "Ringed Planets: Still Mysterious -- II," Sky and Telescope, 69:19, 1985.)Saturn's Rings: FormationThe prevailing theory as to how Saturn's rings were formed comes from the 19th century astronomer Édouard Roche. Roche predicted that if an object such as a moon were to come too close to a large planet such as Saturn, eventually it would be torn apart by tidal forces - the uneven gravitational pull upon an object due to its size.
Adler Planetarium
Under a tidal force, an object experiences a greater gravitational pull on its nearer side than its farther side. If the difference in force is great enough, this can cause a strain which literally breaks an object apart. Scientists now call this limit where an object will be torn apart by tidal forces the Roche Limit.
BFLR = Bump for later reading
Might be a good idea if anyone would build a prototype -- the only harnessed (rather than controlled) fusion reactions so far have been hydrogen bombs. :')
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