What with graduate school and all, I almost forgot about the thing I have been anticipating for months – the Cassini spacecraft‘s superclose flyby of Iapetus. It’s happening right now apparently. So finally we might find out whether or not that crazy equatorial ring really is a spaceship runway like the UFOologists say. I mean, obviously a perfectly straight line of mountains on the equator can’t be explained by natural regularities or random chance, so it’s got to be ID, right? And of course the creos will say that whatever they find is evidence for a young universe.
Iapetus flyby today!
0 TrackBacks
Entry TrackBack URL: http://pandasthumb.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.fcgi/445.
The answer’s obvious: The Great Squirrel God needs walnuts, too. Sheesh, you science-types are too much sometimes.
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
That’s. No. Moon.
Hail Sciurus!
“I have a bad feeling about this.”
All hail the great Pac-Man God!
Slacker. Poor manufacturing. The mold must have slipped. That’s what happens when you try to do everything in just 6 days.
I say it’s a conspiracy. They took a macro photo of a walnut and photoshop’d it. They don’t want you to see what Iapetus *really* looks like, which is like a giant walnut.
Which proves…
oops gotta run bye
Maybe Iapetus is a big nut left there by an enormous alien squirrel that will come back for it when hungry… :D
Posted by mplavcan on September 10, 2007 4:43 PM (e)
Slacker. Poor manufacturing. The mold must have slipped. That’s what happens when you try to do everything in just 6 days.
And on the afternoon of the sixth day, around 4:55, the LORD created Iapetus. And the LORD sayeth, “That will have to do.”
He should’ve just said “nuts”. ;)
Henry
It’s not much of a UFO runway. At least not if the new close-up of a portion of it is representative.
Nick’s second link is currently showing an image titled The Himalayas of Iapetus.
It’s very impressive but mainly because it is the antithesis of smooth and level.
The Dalmation effect at the borders of the snow and the ‘tar’ is striking, too. The person who comes up with the explanation for these substances is going make a name for themselves, if I can state the obvious.
Update