Rotating sphere with ridge around middle puzzles NASA scientists

[Squeegee]

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press-release-details.cfm?newsID=526

"One of these features is a long narrow ridge that lies almost exactly on the equator of Iapetus, bisects its entire dark hemisphere and reaches 20 kilometers high (12 miles). It extends over 1,300 kilometers (808 miles) from side to side, along its midsection. No other moon in the solar system has such a striking geological feature. In places, the ridge is comprised of mountains. In height, they rival Olympus Mons on Mars, approximately three times the height of Mt. Everest, which is surprising for such a small body as Iapetus. Mars is nearly five times the size of Iapetus."

[XNASA]

1. It's a giant acorn!!!!!!!

Run for your lives!!!!!!!!!

[BlueEyedSon]

2. Looks more like a walnut to me!

[XNASA]

4. Yes. Of course. It's a walnut.

Run for your lives!!!!!!!!

[BlueEyedSon]

9. Maybe it's from Twilo..... check your thumbs, then

run for your lives!!!!!!!!

[BlueEyedSon]

14. Ok, I'll spill the beans (from the 100 Greatest TV episodes of all time)

THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW
February 6, 1963

Of The Dick Van Dyke Show's characters, Rob Petrie was the one who usually kept his head, while Sally, Buddy, Laura, and Mel were losing theirs all around him. That's a big part of the appeal of this utterly surreal episode, in which Rob seems to be losing not just his head but his imagination -- and both his thumbs. He stays up late one night watching a thriller about an alien from the planet Twilo who wants to take over the world. The extraterrestrial has eyes in the back of his head, eats walnuts, speaks with a British accent, and looks just like Danny Thomas -- in fact, the creature is played by Thomas himself, who, insiders know, co-owned the company that created The Dick Van Dyke Show. People who are exposed to Absorbitron, a chemical the alien possesses, lose their thumbs and their imaginations. When Rob wakes up the next morning, he finds the living-room carpet strewn with walnuts. In the kitchen, a smiling Laura (Mary Tyler Moore) opens an egg carton and offers him a walnut omelette for breakfast. At work, Buddy (Morey Amsterdam) is eating walnuts, not his usual pistachios, and there are walnuts in Rob's typewriter. Is Rob, pardon the expression, cracking up? He thinks so -- until he wakes up from his nutty nightmare. Seventeen-hundred walnuts were used in "It May Look Like a Walnut"; the ones that didn't open on cue were sent back, and that is what executive producer Sheldon Leonard wanted to do with the extravagant script when he first read it. But when Leonard saw how well the inventive walnut episode played in front of an audience, he gave it the thumbs-up.

http://members.aol.com/speaker606/jim/tv.html

[mdhunter]

3. Death Star, inverted.

[Squeegee]

5. Here's a clearer picture...

[BlueEyedSon]

10. Not this one?

[whistle]

18. That looks like Einstein's brain

[kiki]

6. Hell yes...

"Scientists have determined that running down the centre of the ridge is a trench, somewhere within which is located a small vent, no larger than a womp-rat, which could cause the destruction of the "moon" if breached by a single photon torpedo."

[pmbryant]

7. Weird stuff

But then again, Iapetus has always been weird. It's just even weirder now.

Thanks for the laugh with the headline. :-)

Peter

[On the Road]

8. Are There Hinges on the Back Side?

Looks like it could open up, and flying dinosaurs could emerge to destroy the earth.

Ahhhhhh!

[BlueEyedSon]

11. Yup, it's the "secure undisclosed location"

:)

[On the Road]

12. No Seriously, It Looks Interesting

Maybe it was formed out of dust and pebbles from Saturn's rings which were captured by Iapetus and which orbited around the equator. On Saturn, material from the rings falls into the heavy atmosphere and disappears. On a small moon with little or no atmosphere, maybe the particles eventually just fall to the surface around the equator and build up as a ridge.

Just a thought.

[TlalocW]

13. It's a prank

Someone was holding an old Superball(tm) in front of the telescope - thus the ridge.

TlalocW

[Salviati]

15. It's a giant alien kinder egg

I wonder what's inside?

[Squeegee]

16. Scary aliens!

[BlueEyedSon]

17. Wow, that kinda turns me on!

What a country! Where a poor black boy can grow up to be a rich white woman....

[phantom power]

19. A collapsing space elevator might leave a scar like that...

If it was a really, really fat space elevator.