Saturn's Moon Titan Drifting Away Faster Than Previously Thought
Just as our own Moon floats away from Earth a tiny bit more each year, other moons are doing the same with their host planets. As a moon orbits, its gravity pulls on the planet, causing a temporary bulge in the planet as it passes.
Over time, the energy created by the bulging and subsiding transfers from the planet to the moon, nudging it farther and farther out. Our Moon drifts 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) from Earth each year.[*]
Scientists thought they knew the rate at which the giant moon Titan is moving away from Saturn, but they recently made a surprising discovery: Using data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, they found Titan drifting a hundred times faster than previously understood - about 4 inches (11 centimeters) per year.
The findings may help address an age-old question. While scientists know that Saturn formed 4.6 billion years ago in the early days of the solar system, there's more uncertainty about when the planet's rings and its system of more than 80 moons formed. Titan is currently 759,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from Saturn. The revised rate of its drift suggests that the moon started out much closer to Saturn, which would mean the whole system expanded more quickly than previously believed.
"This result brings an important new piece of the puzzle for the highly debated question of the age of the Saturn system and how its moons formed," said Valery Lainey, lead author of the work published June 8 in Nature Astronomy. He conducted the research as a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California before joining the Paris Observatory at PSL University.
cf: tidal acceleration:
Tidal acceleration is an effect of the tidal forces between an orbiting natural satellite (e.g. the Moon), and the primary planet that it orbits (e.g. Earth). The acceleration causes a gradual recession of a satellite in a prograde orbit away from the primary, and a corresponding slowdown of the primary's rotation. The process eventually leads to tidal locking, usually of the smaller first, and later the larger body. The Earth–Moon system is the best-studied case.
Journal Reference:
Valéry Lainey, Luis Gomez Casajus, Jim Fuller, et al. Resonance locking in giant planets indicated by the rapid orbital expansion of Titan, Nature Astronomy (DOI: 10.1038/s41550-020-1120-5)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @02:03PM
Isn't it time we restored the Moon's independent rotation? Something for the next lunar missions to work toward: I'm thinking of a couple of nuclear powered thrusters blasting tangentially (for many years), on opposite sides of the Moon's equator (rotation only, no translational thrust to upset the Moon's orbit). It would be nice to have a different face of the moon showing, even if the rotation (relative to current tidal lock) was very slow.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @02:07PM (3 children)
We must launch an Attack on Titan
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @02:11PM (1 child)
We need to build a wall. 3 of them to be exact.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @02:50PM
carport?
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday June 10 2020, @03:34AM
Titan caught Saturn coughing and sneezing and is trying to edge away slowly so as not to cause offense.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by inertnet on Tuesday June 09 2020, @03:28PM (5 children)
Space: 1999 [wikipedia.org] was a television series from the 70's, based on our moon getting knocked out of orbit.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday June 09 2020, @06:05PM (4 children)
Not only knocked out of orbit, but with sufficient force to send them to alien worlds (other stars) and through a "black sun" (presumably black hole maybe?).
Costumes: very good
Props: excellent
Sets: excellent, downgraded in 2nd season
Interesting theme music
Stories: not so great, but have no fear, 2nd season gets worse
Barbara Bain's acting ability: now I know where they got the idea for Commander Data.
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Tuesday June 09 2020, @07:59PM
Sadly the version I saw was dubbed in German, in my own country it would have just been subtitled but none of our 3 channels at the time carried it. We had to watch several American television shows and movies in German, all of them had the same voice actors. Imagine Bonanza sounding really weird with shouts like "Hände hoch!" instead of "hands up!". In the exact same voice as some Sesame Street character.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday June 09 2020, @09:52PM (1 child)
According to her Wikipedia entry, she won awards for her acting in Mission Impossible for what that's worth.
Also her real name is Mildred Fogel.
I agree with your review entirely. I was super excited as a 11 year old (maybe) when the promos for Space:1999 started playing on TV, but it was about halfway through series one before I realised the actual stories were drek and the money had all been spent on the sets and special effects.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday June 10 2020, @02:21PM
I did watch the Mission Impossible episodes. Both as a kid when they were broadcast. And some years ago when they were all on Netflix. 7 seasons. They were somewhat interesting. But dated. It also starts to become apparent that there are several basic formulas which various episodes follow.
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Thursday June 11 2020, @01:29PM
I couldn't take Martin Landau. I'm not sure if it was his acting or his appearance.
I was ten in 1975, with hormones raging.
Maya, however: yowza! [space1999.net] Having watched an episode recently, I don't know why I wasn't interested in Sandra Benes [wikipedia.org]. She was very attractive as well.
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Tuesday June 09 2020, @03:54PM
https://genius.com/Italo-calvino-the-distance-of-the-moon-annotated [genius.com]
the full book:
https://irenebrination.typepad.com/files/calvino-italo-cosmicomics.pdf [typepad.com]
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday June 09 2020, @04:12PM (2 children)
The distance between Earth and Titan is depending on each objects current orbital location somewhere between 1,200,217,664 km and 1,666,681,075 km. For simplicity lets take the closest distance possible, so that would be 120,021,766,400,000 cm away. So if it drifts away at 11 cm per year on some kind of perfect earth trajectory it would only take about 10,911,069,672,727 years -- give or take a few million years perhaps if it isn't exactly at the closest distance -- until it smashes into us in some kind of life ending extinction event -- possibly. So no need to start to panic just yet! We have time to prepare!
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Tuesday June 09 2020, @06:13PM
A mere ten trillion years to prepare?
We'll squander it. Just watch. Revisit this SN post when it is too late.
Meanwhile, our sun will become a red gnat or ant or something well before that. That will take us by surprise while we continue preparations for the collision with Titan.
I'll be back to this SN post to revisit our progress in one quarter of a galactic rotation.
But there will first be a sudden demand for Perl programmers to fix sites such as SN which need updating for current web standards. TCP/IP will be obsolete and new messaging standards will be based on the concept that information is piggybacked into advertising packets. All page content must be pure JavaScript 7, whose execution generates the page content.
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday June 09 2020, @11:31PM
If it's like our Moon, it would stop drifting after the Sun dies but well before the trillion year mark.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/06/13/will-the-moon-ever-stop-drifting-away-from-earth/ [forbes.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @04:41PM
From where I sit, it looks like Titan's gettin' bigger, for some reason...