Universe – Saturn: Lord of the Rings
Intro
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Frigid ball of gas surrounded by icy rings
Powerful storms
Lightening 1000000x more powerful Earth’s
Low gravity, no atmosphere
Part 1
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6th planet from the Sun
Frigid – freezing, no surface
H and He
Spins so rapidly, it flattens out – oblate sphere
Would weigh slightly less (150lb = 137lb) due to low density
Only planet less dense than water
2nd largest planet
750x the size of Earth
Day on Saturn is 10.6 hours long
Takes 29.5 Earth years to orbit Sun
48 named moons
4.5 byo
Accretion of H and He that collapsed under gravity – Conservation of angular momentum
Ring is 173,000 miles in diameter – wider than 21 Earths
Ring is only 65 feet thin
Ring made up of space debris – size of houses to snow, made of water ice and pulverized
Spins at 20k-40k mph
Rings may be some of the moons that got too close and smashed into one another OR
large item that hit a moon
1610 – Galileo noted the rings
1655 – Huygens saw several giant rings
There are 7 known ring regions (A, B, C, main ones)
o A is almost transparent
o B is dense
o C is more transparent than A
o D is barely there
Rings glow due to Sun called “ring shine” because ice reflects sunlight
Scientists thing rings will disappear
Part 2
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Scientists used to think formed when Saturn formed
May be a few million years old – trying to figure out due to erosion
Neptune, Uranus, and Jupiter‘s rings are not as bright and not as full, leading scientists to
believe Saturn’s rings are younger
May become charged and then go off the magnetosphere OR may come closer to planet
and erode
Rings need constant new material
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Small moons called shepherds that keep rings in place (Prometheus and Pandora)
700 BCE Syrians noted it for it sparkling
Greeks named it Chronos God of Harvest
Romans named it Saturnus God of Agriculture as well as named a day after it - Saturday
Winds 1000 mph
Eddies, plumes, oval storms all exist
Lightening believed to be there but no one has seen it – need night to see it but can’t
because ring light is too bright
South Pole Storm bigger than Earth, has large eye wall like hurricane
5000 miles across (i.e. NYC to Baghdad)
Unknown what powers it and is not at equator like Earth’s hurricane
Part 3
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1979 Voyager saw perfect geometric hexagonal form over North Pole
Vortex could fit 6 Earths inside it
Moons are being visited
o Titan has been explored in 2005
o Size of Mercury – 2nd largest moon – 50% bigger than our Moon
o Surface has river channels, lake beds, winds, dunes
o Deposits of solid hydrocarbons
o Goo – like pudding
o Extended atmosphere like Earth, no other moon has this
o Very think and massive – 10x Earth’s atmosphere
o Haze 200 miles thick, looks opaque – made of N and CH3 (same as primitive Earth)
o Testing at University of Colorado – sunlight on N and CH3 stimulates organic
compounds
Part 4
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300 below zero F and no water
Lakes carved out of ground
Liquid CH3 rains down due to cold weather
Lots of natural gas energy – enough to support Earth for a long time
Enceladus
o 1/8 size if our moon
o Geysers exist – found in 2005 – shoots hundreds of miles in air
o Called Tiger Stripes – areas where geysers erupt from
o Saturn pulls on the moon’s ice which makes heat through friction
o Geysers might be giving material to Saturn’s E ring
o Hints there might be water on Enceladus
Part 5
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Enceladus – very bright and white, covered in freshly fallen snow
Search for water is search for life
Many elements there for life: heat, water, H, He
Cassini mission to detect temperature