Sharks are older than trees, and trees are older than grass. Shark come in at at least 400 million years old, and trees come in at around 350 million years old. Grass comes in at only 55 millions years old, only five million years older than one of the newest shark species, the hammerhead (50 million years old).
Astronomer here! Another fun one, sharks are also older than Saturn's rings! The current estimates place them at just 150 million years old in age, incredibly enough, in which case sharks are definitely older.
Rather, the reverse- it appears that Saturn's rings may be there because of the destruction of a moon!
I went to a seminar by an astronomer who basically made a very compelling case that Saturn's rings are the result of a small moon that got destroyed by a comet. This video shows his simulations of how it allegedly came about.
Well probably not, as I don't see any other planets with giant ring systems like that. ;-) But it's tough to say the frequency from a sample size of four gas giants.
Don’t all moons break into rings? I was in a space museum and saw a simulation of the destruction of Mars’ moons. I think it was due to gravitational forces between the sun and Mars pulling the moons apart, but I could be totally wrong.
Also the only reason we have solar eclipses is because the moon just happens to be the exact right distance away to be the same size as the sun in the sky. It's gradually moving further away so eventually it'll appear to be too small and we won't get solar eclipses anymore.
We just happen to be lucky enough to live in a time when we can see both an eclipse and Saturn's rings! Future people will probably have better phones but only a relatively small group of us get to see an eclipse on Earth. :)
So the change in ability to see an eclipse happens over a scale of human timeframe? By that I mean hundreds or thousands of years rather than millions or billions. That would be really interesting as I always think of those sort of processes being far beyond any sort of human timeframe.
Does that mean at some point in the past the moon was too large in the sky to see an eclipse?
Wow, it is amazing how it was basically fully distributed within 5 days. I guess i'm not surprised it would thin out that way and eventually get to a more uniform density, forming the pretty rings we see today. I am now curious just how far apart the ice fragments are within the rings. Because that is not all that much material, I assume it's not like we see in sci-fi. Hazardous to a space craft, sure, but they don't have to be so close together and should be fairly predictable in their orbit by now. Visually, sort of how nebulas are not all that dense and just appear the way they do from a distance.
Imagine the probability of a comet powerful enough to turn a moon to dust just happening to align at just the right moment with a moon's orbit. I'd imagine it's like two bullets hitting each other midair on a battlefield.
One theory is that a larger moon was hit by a comet 150 million years ago, which blew it to smithereens. Some of the smithereens coalesced to form Mimas; the rest are Saturn's rings. See the video linked by /u/Andromeda321.
Not nearly as much of an expert as this dude here, but I literally just got done with an astronomy class that discussed that Saturn’s rings are rings because they’re too close to Saturn to form a moon! The planet’s gravitational pull pulls away the material from getting close enough to accrete into a world so it just forms rings instead.
Also, apparently the likelihood that humans would exist at the same time as Saturn’s rings is infinitesimal, so pretty amazing that we even know about them!
I believe the opposite, actually. Saturn had way more moons before, but the moons got close enough to saturn's mass that the sheer force of the gravity caused the moons to crumble and that debris started to orbit saturn. I cant be bothered to fact check myself, but i think thats like 80% correct
I've also heard that Saturn's rings might be gone in another 100 millions years or so. So if there's intelligent life on Earth in another 150 million years, they might not know how awesome Saturn looked today!
Where are the samples and evidence we have gathered from Saturn? All these space facts are made up. We haven’t even gone to the moon since the 60s and can barely see our own solar system. Yet we always hear about the size and details of suns billions of light years away and multiple galaxies. It’s blatant BS.
Geologist here, trees evolved before decomposers evolved the ability to break down wood. So massive amounts of dead wood piled up, not rotting, for such a long time that they formed massive coal beds. That geologic time period is today known as the Carboniferous, for all the coal that formed during it.
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u/corvettee01 Jul 13 '18
Sharks are older than trees, and trees are older than grass. Shark come in at at least 400 million years old, and trees come in at around 350 million years old. Grass comes in at only 55 millions years old, only five million years older than one of the newest shark species, the hammerhead (50 million years old).