Did Iapetus Consume One of Saturn's Rings?

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They are calling the ridge on Iapetus a "Ringe." It's a unique feature, and not like a typical ridge, so they gave it the new name.

I like this idea better than the split halves slamming back together. Wish I'd thought of it.

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This is a fairly interesting idea. I read the paper a couple of weeks ago (and was considering adding it to the Hoagland debunking).

The one problem with the idea is that Iapetus' orbit is tilted pretty extremely from the plan of the rings. They do some hand-waving to explain that, but I'm not sure I buy it. But it's a lot more realistic than hyperdimensional physics or Iapetus being an alien spacecraft! 8)

Alien spaceship... of course. Now that's the story we should have gone with.

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Rindge is a horrible name - I doubt it will stick.

Good idea, but like BA said, it doesn't seem likely because it orbits out of the ring plane.

The mystery deepens.

Could it possibly be the result from collision of two similar sized planetoids? Both would be of slightly different makeup, maybe one being rogue caught by Saturn. The ridge being the result of the collision and squishing together of the two masses.

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No, it's the result of those dang Saturnian gophers. Big buggers they is.

K

If Iapetus really did go through Saturn's rings, I just wonder how it made it from the rings' location to its current orbital location without taking out any of the other satelites.

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I dunno. I'm still leaning toward something like internal stresses causing an upliift as opposed to something falling onto the surface.

Iapetus' entire leading hemisphere is dark... isn't that thought to be from something it picked up in its orbit? Maybe whatever did that made the seam too. :-k

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Maybe the planetoids it's been eating are high in carbohydrates...


Ducks and runs...

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Photons have mass? I didn't even know they were Catholic.

It's obviously a Mars Worm ejected from Olympus Mons shortly before the construction of the giant face. That simple.

That was my first thought! 8)

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Wasn't Iapetus the moon where the monolith was in the novel (not the movie) 2001: A Space Odissey?

Yes.

Hello, first time poster (been lurking for a few days now, and Im learning a lot, thank you all very much)

I have a couple of questions about:



Larger image here

This image of Iapetus showing the ridge (ringe as mentioned earlier) has to be my favourite Cassini image to date - I wondered if there was any evidence of it extending further than the image shows? Any chance it could circle the whole equator?

I can see the ridge ends at the huge crater to the right of the image, which leads me to my second question - the crater covers a huge area but seems relatively shallow (I seem to vaguely remember reading the crater 'cliffs' were something like 12 miles high, please correct me if Im wrong) - would it be possible for a crater to form over such an area without being caused by an impact? (presumably some kind of geological event) Or do impact craters have a tendancy to 'infill' over time? (Ive seen another image of Iapetus showing a landslide inside a crater, so this seems likely, though that was on a much smaller scale)
Or am I wrong in assuming an impact crater will ALWAYS be significantly deeper at the center?

Your answers would greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.

Having been to Saturn on my last vaction, I can confirm both the existance and large size of Saturnian gophers. Much bigger than terrestrial gophers. And they eat... rock. :^o

The length is reported as 1300 kilometers across the dark side. Images of the light side don't seem to show it. So I think it just covers roughly half the moon. See

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=15847

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Iapetus looks like a Canadian from SouthPark.

I suspect it is a gigantic bust of Ike.

[bad pun]
This is a tough nut to crack.
[/bad pun] ops:

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