“The dance between darkness and light will always remain — the stars and the moon will always need the darkness to be seen, the darkness will just not be worth having without the moon and the stars.” -C. JoyBell C.
Yet what do you do when you discover a moon that itself straddles the border between light-and-dark? It might sound like something out of a fantasy novel, but it isn't: it's exactly what we get when it comes to the second of Saturn's moons ever discovered: Iapetus.
Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute / Cassini.
While some of its mysteries remain elusive, such as why its orbit is so severely tilted or what caused its giant equatorial ridge, one mystery has finally been solved: why one hemisphere is so bright and reflective, while the other is so dark.
Image credit: NASA / JPL, via http://spacefellowship.com/news/art16887/reddish-dust-and-ice-migration….
Come find out about the strangest moon in the Solar System!
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I think the strangest moon in our solar system, a system which is said to be 4.5 billion years old, is Saturn’s Enceladus.
Apparently, activity on Enceladus indicates an age of about 30 million years or less.
http://www.space.com/5528-frigid-future-ocean-saturn-moon.html
Of course that's not what the article or the authors say at all. Quite the blatant lie, even for you.
@dean #2: Trolls feed on attention.
@Michael Kelsey and dean
I have noticed this :"Science is Settled " mentality over the last few years at it's matra among the "Science" community . and I fear it is becoming a victim NOT of religious zealots but one of Humanism.
Surly if you truly are honest with the way Humans interact, you can be honest and acknowledge we on a daily basis grub for food. However, after our bellies are full, we grub for INFORMATION.
Don't you find that fascinating?
To dean #2:
So the article provides further confirmation for a 4.5 billion year age for Enceladus?
True michael. Only in the mind of a person of someone not interested in honest discourse could that article be taken as implying what he said. Of course, since it came from the same person who said
That was already clear
You were right, maybe accidentally so given your subsequent statements, to use scare quotes around Science there.
"Science is settled" is a whinge by the anti-science crowd to demand that science is a religion.
*Scientists* saying this say WHAT bit of science it is that is settled.
For example, nobody says that the existence of gravity is not settled. Nobody says that the IR absorption effect of CO2 is not settled.
WHAT science is settled is said.
"The Science" is settled is used by the anti-science crowd to make out that it's all a scam of a totalitarian regime.
I guess that settles it.
Here is an article from last year discussing Iapetus' equatorial ridge. Looks like its dust, not science, that has settled...