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Updated: June 2, 2025
It was here that Laplace left the problem. Nothing could have been more unsatisfactory than his result, though it was accepted for nearly half a century unquestioned. He had shown that a weighted fine hoop may possibly turn around a central attracting mass without destructive changes of position, but he had not proved more than the bare possibility of this, while nothing in the appearance of Saturn's rings suggests that any such arrangement exists. Again, manifestly a multitude of narrow hoops, so combined as to form a broad flat system of rings, would be constantly in collision inter se. Besides, each one of them would be subjected to destructive strains. For though a fine uniform hoop set rotating at a proper rate around an attracting mass at its centre would be freed from all strains, the case is very different with a hoop so weighted as to have its centre of gravity greatly displaced. Laplace had saved the theoretical stability of the motions of a fine ring at the expense of the ring's power of resisting the strains to which it would be exposed. It seems incredible that such a result (expressed, too, very doubtingly by the distinguished mathematician who had obtained it) should have been accepted so long almost without question. There is nothing in nature in the remotest degree resembling the arrangement imagined by Laplace, which indeed appears on
Here, however, in the case of Saturn's ring, was a quoit-shaped body travelling around the sun in continual attendance upon Saturn, whose motions, no matter how they varied in velocity or direction, were so closely followed by this strange attendant that the planet remained always centrally poised within the span of its ring-girdle.
He taught them how to till the ground, and introduced laws amongst them, and so peaceful and happy were they under his reign, that it was called the Golden Age. One of the kings long after Saturn's reign was Tiberinus, whose name was given to the river, and who became its guardian god.
A special interest attached at that time to the question whether the ring is divided or not, for Laplace had then recently published the results of his mathematical inquiry into the movements of such a ring as Saturn's, and, having proved that a single solid ring of such enormous width could not continue to move around the planet, had expressed the opinion that Saturn's ring consists in reality of many concentric rings, each turning, with its own proper rotation rate, around the central planet.
Unless the fact that it was also the substance of Saturn's Rings made a difference. Saturn another of the great, cold, largely gaseous planets, where it would perhaps always be utterly futile for a man to try to land... Ramos, the little Mex who chased the girls. Ramos, the hero, the historical figure, now... Cursing under his breath, Nelsen wandered vaguely to The Second Stop.
I was not mistaken; here was indeed the sinister double circle on Saturn's mount, with the cross inside, a marking so rare as to portend some stupendous destiny of good or evil, more probably the latter. I saw that the man was uneasy under my scrutiny, and, presently, with some hesitation, as if mustering courage, he asked: "Is there anything remarkable about my hand?" "Yes," I said, "there is.
Seen close at hand their component particles might be so widely separated that all appearance of connection between them would vanish, and it has been estimated that from Saturn's surface the rings, instead of presenting a gorgeous arch spanning the heavens, may be visible only as a faintly gleaming band, like the Milky Way or the zodiacal light.
The Fields were only just merging into the Square. We learn that in 1745, the streets were so thinly built in the neighbourhood, that 'when the heads of the Scottish rebels were placed on Temple Bar, a man stood in Leicester Fields, with a telescope, to give persons a sight of them for a halfpenny a piece. Just as we are sometimes offered a view of Saturn's rings from Charing Cross!
Why, even in our own system we can see how very much the planets differ from each other: there are no two the same size; some have moons and some have not; Saturn's rings are quite peculiar to himself, and Uranus and Neptune indulge in strange vagaries. So why should we expect other systems to be less varied?
But if we accept the theory that Saturn is in an early formative stage, and that, millions of years hence, it may become an incrusted and habitable globe, we shall, at least, follow the analogy of what we believe to have been the history of the earth, except that Saturn's immense distance from the sun will always prevent it from receiving an amount of solar radiation consistent with our ideas of what is required by a living world.
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