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Ripples in Saturn's Rings Reveal Planet's Core Is Big and Jiggly:
A team of astrophysicists looking at data from the Cassini spacecraft's tour of Saturn have estimated a new size for the planet's core. Studying gravitational effects on the icy rings, the team determined that Saturn's core is a combination of ice, rock, hydrogen, and helium about 50 times as massive as Earth, making it much more diffuse than previously thought.
"The conventional picture has it that Saturn's interior has a neat division between a compact core of rocks and ices and an envelope of mostly hydrogen and helium. We found that contrary to this conventional picture, the core is actually 'fuzzy': all those same rocks and ices are there, but they are effectively blurred out over a huge fraction of the planet," said Christopher Mankovich, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology and lead author of a paper on the findings, published today in Nature Astronomy.
[...] The rocks and ice inside Saturn slowly give way to the more gassy parts of the planet as you move away from the core, he said. The team found that the core didn't have a clear-cut end point; rather, it had a transition region that made up about 60% of Saturn's entire diameter, making the core a huge part of the planet's total size and much larger part than the 10% to 20% of a planet's diameter that a more compact core would be.
Previously, Saturn was thought to have a rocky, metallic core under all that frigid, fluid gas. "When the observations were limited to the traditional gravity field data, the compact core model did a fine job," Mankovich said, but the newer data from Cassini has given us a different, better picture of the planet's insides. As National Geographic reported in 2015, the idea of studying Saturn's interior using its rings has been floating around for the past few decades. But Cassini, in its 13 years of flying through Saturn's rings (before it ran out of fuel in 2017) offered up the actual data on those dazzling structures and the processes within them.
Also at Ars Technica, CNN, The New York Times (paywalled), and Phys.org.
Journal References:
1.) Mankovich, Christopher R., Fuller, Jim. A diffuse core in Saturn revealed by ring seismology, Nature Astronomy (DOI: 10.1038/s41550-021-01448-3)
2.) John D. Anderson, Gerald Schubert. Saturn's Gravitational Field, Internal Rotation, and Interior Structure [$], Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1144835)
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 17 2021, @05:56AM
Not long ago, we had a soylentil waxing large about jiggles, of a slender philebotomist, with no redeeming scientific information. Oh, what a wasteland of the intellect, is the Soylent IRC!
(Score: 2) by weilawei on Tuesday August 17 2021, @06:25AM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 17 2021, @06:51AM
Leidenfrost thrusters. Construct most of a Dyson sphere contraption to wrap Saturn up except for opening vents opposite the Sun.
Have it drive itself right to the nuclear motor. You can thank me later for the sci-fi novella idea and the movie rights.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 17 2021, @06:58AM
I'm only disappointed Mushy hasn't proposed to capture Saturn on his way to Mars and bring it back to Earth to power his hydrogen cells. Now that might impress me.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 17 2021, @06:59AM (1 child)
It's the Taliban, the US choppers, and the Russians cackling.
It's Saigon All Over Again.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Opportunist on Tuesday August 17 2021, @09:25AM
Unless they overrun Saturn too, nobody gives a fuck.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday August 17 2021, @08:26AM (9 children)
Actually, this is an ingenious method of probing the innards of gas giants. As we have seen with Mars Insight, data about the permutations of a planet can tell us much about its interior structure. The rings, in this case, are standing in for much more difficult to obtain and deploy instrumentation.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 17 2021, @08:31AM (8 children)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by aristarchus on Tuesday August 17 2021, @08:50AM (7 children)
There are already rings around Jupiter, and Neptune, just much thinner and less substantial, so possibly harder to read for these purposes, but not necessarily impossible. And just wait until we get to Uranus.
[Side note: "Uranus" is the rather unfortunate (in English) rendering of the Greek name Οὐρανός, the sky who mated with the Earth (Γαῖα,) to produce the Titans, the youngest, and foremost of whom was Κρόνος (Saturn, in Latin). Jupiter, of course, in Cronos' son, the Latin equivalent for Zeus (Ζεύς).]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 17 2021, @09:52AM (2 children)
until now I only noticed "Kronos" and "Chronos", yet you write it "Cronos".
any particular reason?
(Score: 5, Informative) by aristarchus on Tuesday August 17 2021, @10:28AM (1 child)
"Cronos" is a Titan, Κρόνος, with a Kappa. "Chronos" is Χρόνος, father time. Different initial letters, different gods.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 17 2021, @04:06PM
An etymological link to urination would be a lot less satisfying. Although an early morning slash can be just that.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Tuesday August 17 2021, @11:17AM (2 children)
Sounds like the English name should better have been rendered Uranos.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday August 17 2021, @03:23PM
I've been told that's rather accurate. Not speaking Greek, much less classic Greek, I'm not sure, but I find it highly plausible. Look at the different transliterations of "tsar". (I don't know the original, so I go with "tsar", but "czar" is also common, and I'm told the word derives from Caesar, the most famous Julian.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 17 2021, @04:08PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday August 17 2021, @07:35PM
Without any adolescent joking, it is easy enough to correctly pronounce it Urine-Us
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Tuesday August 17 2021, @09:22AM (2 children)
Big and jiggly gas giant...
Time to crack out the fat jokes, and the ones about titties!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 17 2021, @11:58AM
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday August 17 2021, @07:36PM
What? Ripples in clothing reveal cores beneath are big and jiggly?
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 17 2021, @05:54PM (2 children)
Huh. Lotsa duct tape is the best fix for that.
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Tuesday August 17 2021, @07:37PM
Duct tape is like the force. It has a dark side. It has a light side. It binds the universe together.
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday August 19 2021, @08:37PM
I would have thought something from Victoria's Secrets...
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Tuesday August 17 2021, @07:47PM (2 children)
From TFA
If that is 3 feet in a single direction in 2 hours, with a 3 feet return motion in another 2 hours, then with a period of 4 hours, that is abouts 1/57600 Hz, or 0.000017361... Hz (with the last 1 repeating forever)
(yes, I know you're not supposed to read the article, but gimme a brake)
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday August 19 2021, @08:42PM (1 child)
Sounds like tides to me. Saturn has a lot of moons. I would think there would be rather chaotic tidal forces as a result. The Earth's crust, not just its seas, reacts to tides. In some places the rock moves up to a foot or so in response to the moon. Why would Saturn be immune to such forces?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday August 23 2021, @01:28PM
So just like on Earth, the tides on Saturn cause Saturn to have moons, just as Earth has a moon caused by Earth's tides.
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.