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    United States Avalon Member Skywizard's Avatar
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    Default Saturn Moon's Weird Ridge Rained Down From Space


    Closeup view of Iapetus' equitorial ridge of mountains as imaged by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

    Saturn certainly has some oddball moons and astronomers think they're close to explaining how a weird feature formed on one of them.

    Iapetus is nearly 1,000 miles wide and has a 78 day orbit around the ringed gas giant. But one hemisphere of Iapetus is constantly facing Saturn -- in the same way Earth's moon is tidally locked with Earth -- and the little satellite has a very obvious two-tone surface.

    It's Iapetus' weird equatorial ridge of mountains, however, that has had scientists scratching their heads. Now, with the help of 3-D maps composed from Cassini data, researchers think they have the most likely cause of the mountains pinned down.

    Typically, mountains on Earth are formed as a side effect of plate tectonics and volcanic activity. Alas, Iapetus appears to have neither and, besides, the 6 mile-high mountains are too steep to be explained away by conventional mountain-forming mechanisms. So how did the mountains get there?

    The researchers reckon the material that formed the Iapetian mountains have "exogenic" origin. In other words, they came from space.

    In a paper submitted to the arXive preprint service, the researchers point to a possible collision between Iapetus and another planetary body that generated a huge quantity of debris. This debris settled into orbit around Iapetus' equator and eventually "rained" down from orbit, piling up to form the equatorial mountains.

    This new theory is a variant of another idea that Iapetus may have possessed its own moon that became tidally shredded to create a ring system that eventually fell to the moon's surface.

    But whatever the source, it seems scientists are agreeing that Iapetus couldn't have created the mountain range without some help from up above.


    Space Rocks Raining From Space Forming A Mountain Ridge I think I would have scratched my head a little longer... only IMO, I guess anything is possible!


    Source: http://news.discovery.com/space/satu...ace-140422.htm



    peace...
    ~~ One foot in the Ancient World and the other in the Now ~~

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    Default Re: Saturn Moon's Weird Ridge Rained Down From Space

    Did it hit Hyperion? I would be really ecstatic if that is what happened -- been wondering about "Hyperion Objects" being what cause Mars to lose its atmosphere.

    p.s. Hyperion is neither round nor locked, it TUMBLES.

    Like something that has been violently hit.
    and it lost mass the last time that happened.

    Quote Hyperion (/haɪˈpɪəriən/;[b] Greek: Ὑπερίων), also known as Saturn VII, is a moon of Saturn discovered by William Cranch Bond, George Phillips Bond and William Lassell in 1848. It is distinguished by its irregular shape, its chaotic rotation, and its unexplained sponge-like appearance. It was the first non-round moon to be discovered.
    (tiny whisper: NASA never writes back to me for some reason *wink*)


    p.s. what would happen to a metal-rich moon with no atmosphere when it impacts a larger object? would the heat release the metal and leave a dry mineral husk behind? would the iron turn into precious metal?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_packing_factor


    "saturn turns from gold to iron but can it turn from iron to gold?"

    The metallic inner layers might have imploded into Hyperion's core and the rock exploded outward

    @_@ who knows ask someone smart than me.
    Last edited by Tesla_WTC_Solution; 23rd April 2014 at 04:54.

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    Default Re: Saturn Moon's Weird Ridge Rained Down From Space

    Without seeing the image (my PC settings) I believe those ridges were formed by plasma arc interchange in its past, as Iapetus came to close to another planetary body.
    Just like our Moon did here on Earth.
    Just like the Earth did when it transited away from Saturn.

    It is an Electric Universe.

    NASA keeping the world stupid.

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