Oh they do a fair job with the spin-control on Fundamentalist’s basic misinterpretations of Moses’ words about our arguable ‘creation’ origins. They use abject ridicule like a broad-sword to smite the old-school thinking bible thumpers as if it was some sign of high intellect and not just high school bully tactics.

I find it difficult to understand why people like Phil can not keep an open-mind to alternative theories to his form of religion. Science today is a religion. Believe it or not there is a hard scientific angle to the bible record too. Its just that the Fundamentalists are not equipped for the task. They are like children who lack understanding. Of course the Earth is billions of years old. Of course Iapetus may be too. By all “known” data about the metaphysical supernatural beings (aka God’s spiritual sons?) they too are billions of years old too.

So just maybe the “ET” life that Hoagland and others are referring to are in fact THEM and not the fantastical beings you refuse to believe could ever exist. Darwinism is illogical as it does not take into account a grand supernatural architect. Logic would dictate that our existence is far too complex for random chaotic origins and slow evolutionary changing from Simians to humans who can land a space ship on the Martian north pole just yesterday. That’s a “no brainer”!

Hoagland in my humble opinion is a complicated man. He is conflicted between Creationism and Darwinism. I believe he has low self esteem issues as he feels he needs to fabricated biographical data about his past. He is not a NASA engineer. He was never curator at the Quadrangle in Springfield, MA, and he never produced a radio program in Hartford CT. I know as I live there. Walter Cronkite thinks he’s a “kook”.

But Hoagland’s theories have merit. Don’t reject them so quickly. Remember the late Arthur C. Clarke was right about things you use and take for granted everyday – satellites!

Hoagland may be a bit undereducated and unrefined in his speaking style. He may jump to conclusions without explaining his theories (i.e. hyper-dimensional energy?) but don’t throw out the baby with the bath water just yet. His theories about Mars and artificiality may prove quite amazing to you soon enough. Remember Percival Lowell, Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli, and the Royal British Academy were all doing similar prognostications during the last turn of the century but were shouted down by the ridicule of the anti-ID masses of the day.

Iapetus’ ridge may be artificial IMHO. But not based on what Hoagland says. It could be related to something else equally as baffling (arguable as nutty) as his theory.

Just my POV…

BDW

I fail to see how the “real science” attached to the explaination of Iapetus’s features is anything other than speculation.

If you are a real believer of science, then you know that practically all of science is just speculation and best guesses.

Naturally some are more likely than others, and Hoagland’s claim is particular far fetched, but the scientific explainations are pretty far fetched too in my opinion. They make claims that “Iapetus has such-and-such rotation and such-and-such internal heating” when they do not know these things.

At least Hoagland claims that it ‘could’ be this or that instead of saying that it IS something that the person actually does not know.

badastronomy is a pretty good name for this site…

In the Saturnian system, if you omit Titan (which is much much bigger, and in a class by its own), Iapetus and Rhea are roughly comparable, with Rhea a little bit bigger and more massive than Iapetus. But Iapetus orbits 7 times further away from Saturn than Rhea, and its orbital period is almost 18 times longer.

If you assume that *all* of the gas giant major satellites were essentially melted down during the first couple million years of the solar system as a result of the radioactive heating due to the short-lived radioisotopes, Al26 and Fe60 — a fair assumption since a good portion of the asteroids did the same during this period, and those were mostly much smaller bodies — then all of them (at least ones the size of Mimas or bigger) would have relaxed into oblate spheroids consistent with their rotational periods and self-gravity early on.

Now other things being equal, in a given system, the smaller moons would have frozen up faster. But in a given system, the tidal effects that drive a satellite into synchronous rotation with its parent body are significantly greater the closer the moon is to its parent.

So of all the regular moons of the gas giants in our solar system, what is the best single candidate for freezing up sufficiently quickly after the initial million or two million year heating pulse so as to develop a rigid outer shell that could resist gravitational relaxing *faster* than that moon was slowed into synchronous rotation by tidal action? Yep, Iapetus.

Chill Out said:
> Theres no connection between the heat of a body and the effect of a gravitational tidal force upon that object right? So why are they connected in regards to the ridge?

jotetamu said:
> How did they support the idea of using iron-60 and aluminium-26? Is there any evidence that these were suitably abundant in the early solar system?

Haven’t had the chance to read the paper. This is the chain of reasoning I’ve been able to piece together.

—–
Iapetus has a bulge not consistent with current rotation rate, and an equatorial ridge. If Iapetus had spun faster when young, it would have been shaped to fit the bulge. The only reasonable means for Iapetus to have slowed from that speed to the current speed is tidal interactions with Saturn.

Calculations for tidal slowing would not fit the speed differentials in the time frame if Iapetus had been solid. However, a liquid or semi-liquid (mixed state) planet would have higher tidal reactions, and slow more. But Iapetus is not currently liquid or semi-liquid. In order to be in that state, Iapetus would need more heat. But that heat would need to have been present for the slowing, then disappear before the present.

A number of heat source models were evaluated, including decay of long-lived radiogenics, different surface properties (greenhousing, low emissivity, insulating layer), and impact heating. None of those was sufficient to account for the heating except the long-lived isotopes, and they would still be around. But short-lived isotopes could account for the heating, and would be gone.

There appear to be “Calcium-Aluminum-Inclusions” (CAIs), which contain aluminum-26. Meteorites from the inner solar system have been found with aluminum-26 and iron-60. Therefore, these are likely candidates. Calculations using these decay rates set the age of formation to an approx. 2 Million year tolerance band.

Furthermore, a hot Iapetus would shrink as it cooled. The solid crust over liquid interior would freeze the crustal bulge for the faster rotation speed, so it would retain the basic shape, and the shrinking caused by the cooling would require the matter to go somewhere, so it piled up around the equator.

Ergo, squashed shape not fitting current speed and a ridge around the equator. And an approximate age for Iapetus, to boot.

YEC, that response is funny. 4.652 billion years is 4,652,000,000 years. That gives, oh a million years of leeway there. Not exactly month and year, is it? Plus, the number in the article above is 4.564 billion years.

MattFunke said:
> The article is stating that the smallest amount of time a rotation would have taken (at least) is five hours. In any event, the amount of time a rotation took is less than 16 hours.

I agree that is what they are trying to convey. My original wording is an attempt to describe why that wording fails, why it is semantically bungled.

In the context of the original sentence, “at least” implies a minimum. But in fact, 5 hours per revolution is the fastest speed. 16 hours per revolution is slower. It is the juxtaposition of “at least” with the fastest speed that is the issue. I realize 5 is less than 16, but the construction of the sentence is crappy. It should have been stated differently.

In the context of the original sentence, “at least” implies a minimum. But in fact, 5 hours per revolution is the fastest speed. 16 hours per revolution is slower. It is the juxtaposition of “at least” with the fastest speed that is the issue. I realize 5 is less than 16, but the construction of the sentence is crappy. It should have been stated differently.

As to the “roughly 4.652 billion years” figure, that is ridiculous. What did they expect, the exact month and year? There’s no way the evidence from Iapetus can yield a date to four significant figures without assuming the very thing they ought to be proving. Dates are inextricably linked to the assumptions made. Those assumptions should have been stated up front. They have blindly accepted a consensus date from uniformitarian, evolutionary theories, and molded their data to fit it. Yet they spoke of these dates as facts.

Because 1/4 is less than 1/2. I would say that something (whatever you might care to name) was at least 1/4 but less than 1/2.

Irishman: It does not make sense. The association of maximum and minimum is reversed. It only looks right because 16 is greater than 5.

I agree that it makes a semantic mess and that they could have phrased it better. I don’t believe that they were mistaken in what they said, however, which is what you originally asserted.

The article is stating that the smallest amount of time a rotation would have taken (at least) is five hours. In any event, the amount of time a rotation took is less than 16 hours.

Rephrasing it to say “from 5 to 16 hours per revolution” would have been better.

I am writing to support your endeavour. I am a big fan of your site, it is much needed in an age where the Internet makes it so much easier to spread lies and misinformation.
I am the scientist who proposed the theory that Iapetus might have collided with a ring of Saturn. I have submitted that paper for publication in the Journal of Geophysical research, but it was rejected. The referee had very good points on why the theory was improbable, and that impression has been reinforced by some subsequent talks I had with the planetary scientists at Cornell University. It is very unlikely, from a probabilistic point of view, to have the orbit of Iapetus exactly aligned with the equator of Saturn, to the point that all particles in the saturn ring will hit the Iapetan equator, no to mention the required orbital migration. So, basically, their arguments convinced me that my hypothesis was not likely to be a good description of what really happened.
However, I don’t think it was entirely wrong… Recently, Wing Ip has proposed that the equatorial ridge might be the result of the collapse of a former ring of Iapetus, such a ring could have formed naturally form impact debris in orbit around this satellite. The equatorial oblateness of Iapetus would insure that all orbiting debris would form a ring. There is nothing improbable about his hypothesis, although it raises the question of why don’t we see such structures around other moons. Because it is a much better hypothesis, his idea was published in October 2006 by the same journal that rejected my paper (see Geophys. Res. Lett. 33, L16203, 2006).
I guess I was a bit embarrassed about proposing such an implausible hypothesis, a bit more study and work would have shown that. But that hypothesis had some hint of the truth, the action of a ring. This is how science progresses. People propose explanations, is they are not statistically plausible, or if they don’t match observations, or are physically impossible, the explanation is rejected, and we search for a better one. One thing is clear to me: after Wing Ip’s paper, it is clear to me that we could form something like the equatorial ridge of Iapetus without having to resort to pyramid builders!!!

Keep the great work,

Paulo Freire
Arecibo Observatory / Cornell University

Five hours per revolution is faster than 16 hours per revolution. That is because it is a period, which is an inverse. They think they’re talking about frequency, how many turns per unit time.

You’re absolutely right about revolutions and periods and frequency, but I think you misunderstand the article. The article means that Iapetus originally rotated much faster than it does now. Each revolution took, at the least, five hours, but less than sixteen hours. Nothing there says that they believe five hours per revolution is slower than sixteen hours per revolution.

Oh, several people beat me to it, but it’s Mimas that more closely resembles the Death Star. Even has a superlaser dish on it.

D

Although it’s nearly two years old it seems to be essentially the same information (though the numbers are slightly different). Although the abstract is hard to follow, as I understand it they are saying that they can use the shape of Iapetus to deduce the amount and approximate timing of energy release to soften Iapetus enough for Saturn’s tidal force to affect it at the right rate. The timescale points to Al26 (which is already known to have existed in the early solar system because its decay product Mg26 is found in meteorites) as the culprit (and since then they have thought of Fe60, presumably).

The crucial point for the age of Iapetus seems to be that they can deduce the amount of these isotopes in the newly-formed Iapetus. They also know the amount that existed at the time meteoritic Calcium-Aluminium inclusions (that’s the CAIs of the link there – CAIs are thought to be the oldest solid objects that formed in the solar system) formed, and the difference allows them to work out how much younger Iapetus is (about a million years in the link, seemingly revised upwards somewhat now) than the CAIs, which can be dated from other, long-lived isotopes.

So I think Rich is right – it isn’t an independent check on the age of the solar system, because it depends on knowing the age of the CAIs. Indeed, if this work had led to an independent measurement of the solar system, I think that would probably have been the main headline.

I love this kind of chain of reasoning, though, the way they can deduce so much from aparently so little. Fully deserving of some extra exclamation marks. You might like to spare a bit of awe for Google, too.

I assume that the linked abstract is for preliminary results at a conference and this is now the finished paper.

>>> To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, multiple punctuation
>>> marks are a sign of a diseased mind.

Nonsense!!!

I love me some Pratchett, but there are, IMHO, times when a “?!” is valid.

That would be “!?” for those of you south of the equator.

Great post!! I wanted to point out another analogy to Hoagland’s claims. He is, in fact, making an Intelligent Design (ID) claim. His logic is the same as ID – we have no naturalistic explanation for the ridge, therefore it was intelligently designed. This case shows the inherent weakness of making such an argument from ignorance. Give scientists time, they will find an explanation. Even if they don’t what you have is a mystery – an unknown – not a known alien artifact. Concluding it’s alien would require some positive evidence of artifice, which is lacking.

I hope BA or some other blogger takes the trouble to explain the paper to us lazy laypeople, because it does seem a neat idea. (BA said in a comment that he hasn’t read the original paper yet.)

Jim Roberts