Now is the winter of our happiness

[fluffymark]

oh WOW! *bighappysmile*

Imagine one old, very beautiful huge converted chapel in deepest rural Derbyshire. Fill it with 20 talented and special friends all weekend. Spend much of the time being overawed in a marathon reading of (and also partial acting of) a whole 8 Shakespeare's History plays, in chronological order and casting continuity between plays. Add much alcohol, much silliness, amazing food, pretty costumes, folk singing sessions and a very cosy sauna. And yay, one of the best weekends of my life!! (excepting the missing my Nini immensely. That was bad) Still on a **huge** high because of it, and full of fond memories. Huge huge squidges to the_alchemist for the feat of organizing such a fun event. Am in awe and love of everyone there. When can we do it again??? *grins*

Photos, anyone? *hopefulsmile* I forgot my camera (silly me!) Edit: evil_nick has photos online here.

Am excited by the prospect of going along to a nice sounding talk about Saturn tomorrow with doseybat and compilerbitch at the Dana Centre! *bouncies* (So much for my resolution to reduce my social life....gaaaaaaaah!) What's the meeting up / dinner plan?

La la laaaaaaa

Comments

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

How about meeting somewhere near the Dana centre itself for food, maybe at 6pm? Or if doseybat can't make it for that time, we could always eat afterwards. Do you know of anywhere near there that sells edible food at non-extortionate prices?

[fluffymark]

Won't get out of work before 6, I suggest we only go for food after (if we want to). Let us meet at 6:30 at South Kensington tube station?

Have asked them for a 4th ticket, for loubieloutoo, will let you know if I get a reply about that - will be nice to see Lucy again. :)

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

OK, no problem. 6.30pm at South Kensington it is, then. If you get a reply, email doseybat and put a message on loubieloutoo's LJ so she definitely gets to know. :-)

See you tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to it. Cassini is turning in amazing results -- have you seen this, on today's BBC web site?



It's an enormous ridge around the equator of Iapetus -- taller than Mount Everest. Kind of makes the great wall of China seem very, very insignificant. No one seems to have a clue how it was formed.

[fluffymark]

*bounce* See you tomorrow, then. :)

Seen that photo, yes - an incredible ridge, and mindboggling. My first thought is that a past ring system around Iapetus got perturbed and collapsed onto the surface, mainly at the equator, and the gravity of Iapatus isn't strong enough to reform Iapatus into a sphere. This might also explain the variation in colouration across Iapetus. Er....does that sound plausible to you?

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

Plausible, yes, but...

I believe the appropriate nonexistent Spock quote is, 'Christ on a chocolate pogo stick, Captain!'.

[fluffymark]

A giant alien particle accelerator around the equator of Iapetus?

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

Hehe. Who knows? Whatever happened can't have been terribly standard, that much is certain. I like your idea, actually -- it makes a lot more sense than it somehow resulting from a big impact some time in the past. The ridge just doesn't look right for that, and being almost (but not quite) dead on the current equator probably makes it quite old. A moon with a ring system? Would MHD effects be enough to slow the particles down enough to have them fall out of orbit? Would they arrange themselves so neatly under those circumstances? Wow. Like, really, wow.

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

(Thinks...)

How conductive is Iapetus? Is it metallic asteroid like or rocky? I was just wondering, because a disc like ring system consisting of charged particles would probably act like a homopolar generator, so if the crust was quite conductive, this would create (possibly quite large) eddy currents that would in turn induce a back torque on the disc, slowing it down. This would be most effective close to the surface, so if the ring fell in quite gradually that might stop it from buckling or becoming turbulent so that it fell in a neat ridge.

[fluffymark]

Rocky, mainly, I think. If it is metallic, it's not likely to be highly magnetized. Usually you need a liquid metallic core to maintain a large scale magentic field over a long timescale, which Iapetus won't have.

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

Iapetus wouldn't need a magnetic field, or a liquid core. It'd just need to be conductive to act as a 'shunt' style electromagnetic brake, if I remember my homopolar motor/generator theory properly. If it once had a liquid iron core, this would probably still be enough even if it had crystallised long ago.

Still, like you say, tidal forces are probably enough without that.

[fluffymark]

My idea is not using MHD effects - pure tidal effects are sufficent. Lets say a collision with proto-Iapetus from some dark object destroys the objects and throws the remains into material around Iapetus. This will naturally settle into a disk/ring configuration around the equator. Now, *tidal* forces cause the particles of the disk to suffer orbital decay, and spiral inwards. My estimated timescale (doing no calculations - an educated guess) is that this takes about 10 earth years (+-2 in order of magnitude). This is long enough for everything to settle slowly, yet short enough so that the disk isn't pulled out of shape by Saturn in that time. Hence the vast majority of the disk just piles onto Iapetus's equator, leaving the ridge. Some gets scattered and lands by the sides, leaving a dark band around the equator. The polar regions still reveal the pale "natural" surface of Iapetus. Appears to fit wonderfully. Gosh.

[ixwin.livejournal.com]

It's a giant Lush Bath Bomb!

[fluffymark]

*blink* *blink*

You are so right!! It so is, isn't it? :) :) :)

[the-lady-lily.livejournal.com]

evil_nick was going to put all the 200 photos he took onto CD and post them out to people, so photos will be forthcoming. The 'good ones' should be up on a website somewhat sooner, I think. Discussion seems to be happening over in ixwin's journal.

Yay for Histories! SO MUCH FUN!

(Sorry for repost, felt like adding the underscore. And the correct tagging. *sigh*)

[fluffymark]

Yay SO MUCH FUN! :) You were stunningly good - especially the Welsh bits!

And of course, Tea Under Table, and Gin and Tea happened! (although not at the same time) How could I forget to mention that? A fine tradition! :)

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

Yay!

It sounds like all of you had fun.

Gina

[fluffymark]

Hugely fun, yes yes yes! :)

You're coming to mirabehn's party at the end of January, yes? :)

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

Yes indeed.

Gina

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Wasn't it great... I can't believe I met so many incredable people and had so much fun in such a short space of time. Or that now I'm back looking at compressors in Cambridge... :-( Oh well, there is LJ and lots of new "friends" (who are hopefully now friends too!)

[fluffymark]

Was delightful to be there, and truly lovely to finally meet you (I've been noticing your comments in many of my friends journals, and wondering who you were!) and have some very interesting chats with you. Yay shiny! :)