Saturn moon - odd egg

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by Don Hakman, Feb 25, 2005.

  1. Don Hakman Registered Senior Member

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  3. Silas asimovbot Registered Senior Member

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    Erm, does this graphic serve a purpose?

    I was rather hoping to see a discussion about the genuine oddities amongst the moons of the Giants, two of which have been utilised by that science fiction great Arthur C. Clarke.

    In the 1950s he wrote a novellette called Jupiter Five in which the various oddities of the first Jovian sattelite to be discovered after Galileo found the Big Four were catalogued, and upon visiting J5 (Mimas, is it?) it transpired to be a giant space ship, not dissimilar to Norman Bergrun's Ringbuilder concept (only with the basic common sense that something as large as he claimed it to be would have to be an existing known body - in this case one of Jupiter's smaller moons).

    The original book of 2001: A Space Odyssey did not in fact go to Jupiter to find the TMA-2 - the second alien obelisk, but to the Saturn moon Iapetus (or Japetus), the most notable feature of which is the fact that one side of it shines with 6 times the reflectivity (or more correctly, albedo) than the other side. Clarke postulated (in the context of his science fiction, of course) that one side of the moon was completely smooth and "painted" white, with the second obelisk at its centre.
     
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