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Solved Saturn rotation mistery?, Enceladus Geysers Mask the Length of Saturn's Day
dilo
post Mar 23 2007, 06:16 AM
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http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/...i-20070322.html
QUOTE
The neutral gas particles ejected from the geysers on Enceladus form a donut-like torus around Saturn. As these particles become electrically charged, they are captured by Saturn's magnetic field, forming a disk of ionized gas, or plasma, which surrounds the planet near the equator. The particles weigh down the magnetic field so much that the rate of rotation of the plasma disk slows down slightly. This slippage causes the radio period, controlled by the plasma disk rotation, to be longer than the planet's actual rotation period.
[...] The day measured by Cassini is some six minutes longer than the day recorded by NASA's Voyager spacecraft in the early 1980s, a change of nearly 1 percent. [...] Based on the new observations, scientists now think there are two possible reasons for the change in radio period. The first theory is that the geysers on Enceladus could be more active now than in Voyagers' time. The second is that there may be seasonal variations as Saturn orbits the sun once every 29 years.


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