Ho. Lee. Shit.

[theweaselking]

That's Saturn's F ring, there.

That's something punching through the F ring and leaving what looks like a hydrodynamic wake.

That kind of shouldn't be possible.

HOLY SHIT.

I love science.

Comments

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

Science? Pffft, that's magic! Don't you understand astrology? That right there caused thousands of deaths!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jeremiad/]

Why impossible?

I want to understand why this is so awesome. :-)

[jerril]

The rings of saturn are supposed to be, basically, a lot of empty vacuume and some sparkly, but essentially sparse dust. You don't leave a wake in that, you just basically sweep a little section clear.

[kafziel.livejournal.com]

What kind of dust, though? Could it be magnetic dust?

[jerril]

"The ring particles are made almost entirely of water ice, with some contamination from dust and other chemicals." (Wikipedia)

We've sent probes out, and spectral analysis is continuing to prove to be pretty reliable, so I'm pretty confident they have the right idea here.

[jerril]

Although as I read more, the 2008 theory for the wake is moonlets. I don't know where our host found the picture, so if it's more recen than that, with more recent confusion, then I guess that theory is falling out of style.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

That explains the rippling between the rings, using a standard definition for the density of the rings and the orbits of the known moons.

Objects cutting through the rings are not "moons" and that pick shows *spreading* which implies *wave effects*.

Which is HOLY SHIT level stuff. One way or another.

and I look forward to finding out how!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jeremiad/]

Thanks!

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Leaving a wake implies a *huge* particle density, as the particles you push out of the way push other particles.

That *shouldn't be possible* in the rings of Saturn. They're too diffuse.

Which means, we're most likely wrong about how the rings of Saturn work. Or about how *whatever the fuck hit that* works.

Which is AWESOME, either way.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jeremiad/]

I appreciate the explanation.

[dilickjm.livejournal.com]

The other possibility is that the object there is relatively large and the dark strips is merely a shadow. The lower bright line being occluded by the dark stripe, but not actually broken by it, may lend some credence to this theory.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

He's suggesting that the black line is a shadow cast by a *much closer* object that's blocking sunlight, not that something has passed through the ring.

Which, depending on further observation, is possible! A seriously unlikely coincidence, but worse has happened, before.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The shadow's really long for that, and the object itself getting larger and brighter as it passes through - which implies displacing matter, not just getting closer, on that scale.

[angelcorrine.livejournal.com]

If it's an alien spaceship then I volunteer to be a Commander for the Alliance!

[trotfox.livejournal.com]

FOR THE HORDE!!!

Oh, wait... Sorry. Knee-jerk reaction and all.

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

It's always Their fault.

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

That just means you get eaten first.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

Well the elder Gods used to do that, but then some dick invented Katamari Damancy and the Elder Gods decided there was a better, more fun, way of doing things...

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's generally the point of being a cultist.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Psssh. Campus Crusade For Cthulhu! Get Eaten Last!

[agingcusahack.livejournal.com]

Ah, memories....

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Ah, it's just Voyager.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Subspace disturbance wake!

[the-trav.livejournal.com]

It's not just like, a beam of light or something that's being bounced back at us in different angles as it traverses in towards / out of Saturn?

[moosl.livejournal.com]

Could it be a small asteroid on it's way in to the planet?

[jagash.livejournal.com]

Curious, what is the original source?

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

http://ciclops.org/view/5683/Punching_through_the_F_Ring?js=1

[rdmasters.livejournal.com]

Well. I guess we know where the sentient elephantoid aliens are hiding their colony ship.

Footfall -18 months and counting...

Bugger for us looking out over the Indian Ocean...

[sandchigger.livejournal.com]

Um... that's Saturn's moon Daphnis, isn't it? The 'wake' is caused by it's gravitational pull on the dust particles in the ring. I believe io9 did an article on it last week.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Nope. Daphnis creates the Keeler Gap, in the A Ring - and it makes the edges of the gap "ripple", but it doesn't go stomping through like this one.

This isn't Daphnis.

[sandchigger.livejournal.com]

Oh. Some other moon then. Saturn's got tons of 'em.

Also: damn my faulty memory of articles read in haste last week at work. DAMN IT!

[elffin.livejournal.com]

It is likely not a hydrodynamic effect, but scoop and scatter - where the impact scoops up dust, and the subsequent inertial transfer changes the dust's vector (because it is not being struck by a perfectly flat / ninety-degree-to-impact-vector surface) until it eventually slips off "the side" of the impactor.

In short, it likely did punch a clean hole - and what we're seeing as the trail is the dust that got punched doing what it is going to do with the newly-imparted inertia: travel in roughly the same but not precisely the same vector as the impactor.