New Outdated Saturn Ideas

Figure 1. Saturn rings edge-on and largest moon Titan

The former old ideas of Saturn’s rings age was 4.4 billion years, based on the imagined age of the solar system. A new estimate, based on a study of some of the small Saturn satellites by SETI researchers using suspect ‘computer models’ is greatly reduced. A space.com article states “The researchers showed that tidal effects – which refer to the gravitational interaction of the inner moons with fluids (?) deep in Saturn’s interior …should cause the moons to move to larger orbits in a very short time … By looking at computer models that predict how extended a moon’s orbit should become over time, and comparing that with the actual position of the moon today, the researchers found that the orbits of Tethys, Dione and Rhea are less dramatically altered than previously thought”. Also, studies of geysers on Enseladus using models assuming they are driven by tidal reactions with Saturn, concluded that Enceladus would have moved from its original orbital position (?) to its current one in only 100 million years. Thus we have astronomy’s latest estimate of the age of the rings of Saturn only 100 million years. This is annoying to astronomers in general who are happier when dealing with billions, rather than millions of years.

Cyclic Catastrophism

In the Cyclic Catastrophism scenario, the entire solar system was completely changed 6,000 years ago when an unseen body struck Jupiter resulting in an enormous nuclear fusion explosion, out of which proto-Venus and the Galilean Moons contracted and condensed. In fact it is the radiation from that explosion that is currently imagined by the ‘great minds’ to be radiation from the ‘big bang’. In this hypothesis, the giant planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, are solid, frozen, highly deuterated methane gas hydrate bodies (MGH), comprising primarily water and methane. Their formation in the freezing temperature of the outer planetary nebula caused deuterium (heavy hydrogen) to replace hydrogen in a large fraction of the water molecules, resulting in the giant planets comprising enormous quantities of fuel for fusion explosion and burning. This explains why the impact on Jupiter resulted in the largest explosion in the history of the solar system.

Figure 2. The extent of Jupiter’s flaming plume as a function of date. Straight lines suggest icy bodies formed when the plumes condensed.

As explained in detail in a number of posts on this site, that impact also triggered a fusion furnace on the surface of Jupiter, the flaming plume of which originally extended some two million km into space, as far as the orbit of the farthest Galilean Moon Callisto. This plume, shown in Figure 2, slowly declined over the last 6,000 years and the fusion reaction is now hidden beneath the clouds of Jupiter, but is still producing as much heat as the toal amount of sunlight being absorbed by the entire planet and is driving the circulation of the zonal wind bands (actually vortices constrained below by the solid surface of the MGH) and its primary exhaust pipe is the Great Red Spot. The flaming plume comprised essentially water, and as it expanded out into space condensed and collected into innumerable icy bodies of all sizes which have populated the asteroid belt, Kuiper Belt, Oort Cloud and probably the entire Pluto system.

The Age of Saturn’s Rings

Fig. 3 NASA Cassini probe imaged ‘spokes’ which show that new material is still being blasted from Saturn into the rings.

So what has this to do with Saturn? Due to its rapid spin, once every 10 hours, the biggest, best target for Jupiter’s plume-formed icy bodies has been Saturn. Since Saturn also comprises highly deuterated MGH, two things happen when one of Jupiters big, fast moving, icy bodies hit it. They cause ‘small’ fusion explosions when they hit the surface and these explosions blast, guess what? water ice into orbits around Saturn. The water or ice from these explosions which fails to reach the Roche (tidal stability) limit cannot condense into moons, so becomes part of the ring system. Figure 3 taken by the NASA Cassini probe shows ‘spokes’ which comprise new clouds of ice particles either hitting the existing rings or casting shadows on them. Thus the great explosion on Jupiter, out of which proto-Venus was born, is still adding to the rings of Saturn, which are obviously less than 6,000 years old.

Isaiah 25:1 Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you and praise your name, for in
perfect faithfulness you have done wonderful things, things planned long ago.