Saturn's Rings (2): Spokes

In October 2029, Jinsheng Prefecture, Liang Nation

An accident occurred as the Lingguang probe approached Lingshen Star, destroying all electrical equipment and causing the project to fail.

Daphne Braun had poured her heart into it, filled with curiosity about Lingshen Star, only to receive a cold, harsh outcome.

Michael Max understood Daphne's feelings. Space exploration is time-consuming and risky; a tiny mistake or some unpredictable accident could lead to failure.

Michael had failed so many times he couldn't count, but for Daphne, this was her first time.

Due to work, Michael frequently traveled between Rocket City in Sa Prefecture and the Liang Nation Space Administration research center in Jinsheng Prefecture.

Two days ago, Michael and Professor Braun went to Jinsheng Prefecture for a meeting. He persuaded Daphne to accompany them, to relax at her alma mater.

Daphne's alma mater was Jinsheng Prefecture Institute of Technology, which had a long-standing collaboration with the Liang Nation Space Administration, cultivating a large number of talents in astronomy and aerospace.

Martha, an omnipresent reporter, somehow learned of Daphne Braun's itinerary. The two met for afternoon tea at an outdoor cafe. After what seemed like aimless small talk, Martha leaned forward and lowered her voice to ask:

"I heard Michael met with Prince Harufa. Did he mention it to you?"

After receiving Daphne's affirmative answer, Martha asked again:

"Daphne, my dear Doctor of Astronomy, can you explain in simple terms what kind of experiment Michael plans to conduct on Enceladus?"

Daphne knew that Michael's Acebe Company had launched a probe targeting Saturn's moon, Enceladus. The publicly announced objective was to research whether there were signs of life beneath Enceladus's ice shell.

She had once curiously asked Michael if the experiment's purpose was truly just to search for signs of life. Michael had smiled and refused to answer, claiming it was top secret.

Martha learned that Michael was also keeping secrets from Daphne. Amidst her surprise, a hint of disappointment surfaced, which in turn piqued Daphne's curiosity. Under Martha's persistent questioning, she revealed some clues she had gathered.

One of Martha's informants was a researcher at Sorbonne University in Country F. He claimed that Nikola Tesla's theories, sealed away by Liang Nation for many years, could be used to create a super energy source.

The research team in Country F had studied the structures of all celestial bodies in the Solar System and concluded that Enceladus was the optimal experimental site for building this energy source.

Daphne Braun was astonished. In a daze, she felt she could once again find confirmation in Michael's past fragmented remarks. Given Michael's personality, how could he be content with merely surviving in a capsule on Mars?

He had expressed great interest in Mars's core, the ice beneath its soil, and the dry ice at its south pole. Could it be that he had truly mastered the theory for manufacturing some kind of super energy source?

As Daphne pondered deeply, Martha threw out another startling question:

"Daphne, I can sense that you deeply love Michael. Does your love for him have boundaries? In other words, no matter what he does, will you always stand by his side?"

Daphne froze, looked up at Martha, and tilted her chin, as if asking, "For example?"

"For example, could Michael's device on Enceladus potentially destroy the rings of Saturn?" Martha said meaningfully.

"How could that be? No matter the purpose, no one has the right to destroy Saturn's rings," Daphne stated loudly and decisively.

Daphne Braun's Mars Burst Hypothesis began to form during her university years. While researching and collecting evidence to support her hypothesis, she had paid attention to Saturn and its moons.

Saturn is a gas giant with no solid surface, so according to Daphne's theory, Saturn itself would not burst. However, Saturn has the most moons of any planet in the Solar System.

Currently, 149 Saturnian moons have been discovered, while the more massive Jupiter has only 95. Saturn has more moons than all the planets in the Solar System combined. Where did so many moons come from?

Michael and Professor Braun were attending a seminar at the Jinsheng Prefecture Space Research Center to study the engineering feasibility of the Moon Mass Tumor experiment. During a break, Michael explained his Enceladus plan to Professor Braun.

Enceladus is located within the outer E ring of Saturn, with a semi-major axis of 238,000 kilometers. Saturn's radius is over 62,000 kilometers.

If a base were built on Enceladus's equator, a small spacecraft could be launched towards Saturn. This spacecraft, connected to the base by a sufficiently long carbon fiber tube, would adjust its orbit to maintain the same angular velocity as Enceladus at an altitude of 1,000 kilometers above Saturn's surface.

Because Enceladus is tidally locked to Saturn, the base on Enceladus's equator would always face the center of Saturn, remaining fixed.

"The carbon fiber tube between the spacecraft and the base is about 175,000 kilometers long, which is greater than the wavelength of superluminal waves. Is that why you said Enceladus is the most suitable location in the Solar System to build a superlight wave power station?" the professor asked.

"Enceladus is not just about the distance; the key is that it has Saturn's rings between it and Saturn," Michael replied. "After the carbon fiber tube receives superluminal wave radiation, it heats up, causing the water ice in the Saturnian rings rotating below it to evaporate."

Michael emphasized that the Saturnian rings closer to Enceladus rotate faster. The heated carbon fiber tube would not simply melt ice in a fixed straight line perpendicular to its surface. Instead, it would uniformly absorb water vapor from the entire ring disk as it rotates at high speed. Water droplets would condense around the carbon fiber tube, forming structures that increase the power of the superlight wave power station.

Professor Braun pondered Michael's plan, and with his usual rigorous attitude, said:

"Last time, you told Mr. E that Saturn had a natural support for a superlight wave power station. I immediately thought you were referring to the Saturnian rings. Your proposal is theoretically feasible, but the risks involved in extracting water from the Saturnian rings need to be carefully calculated and assessed."

Professor Braun looked at the intelligent yet wildly imaginative explorer before him and thought, what a coincidence.

After deeply researching Nikola Tesla's theory of gravity, Professor Braun had designed another ingenious experiment besides the Moon Mass Tumor experiment. The location he chose was precisely the Saturnian rings.

The Saturnian rings are divided into multiple rings, extending from a few thousand kilometers from Saturn to hundreds of thousands of kilometers outward, composed of ice particles ranging from microns to meters in size, with an average thickness of only ten meters.

The current mainstream theory calculates and estimates the orbital periods and speeds of different rings of Saturn based on the law of universal gravitation.

According to this calculation, this thin "large disk" of Saturn's rings does not orbit Saturn as a whole. The inner rings experience greater gravitational pull from Saturn and rotate faster, while the outer rings experience less gravitational pull and rotate slower.

Nikola Tesla's baffling theory of gravity suggests otherwise!

He believed that the gravitational force an object experiences depends on the intensity of the energy it displaces. In an ideal gravitational field, gravitational events are typically abstracted as a central mass attracting another orbiting object, such as Saturn and its moons.

This abstraction implies an assumption: the energy displaced by the orbiting object comes entirely from the radiation of the central energy source. In this scenario, Nikola Tesla's energy gravity and the results calculated by the law of universal gravitation are identical.

However, if the radiation source is not just a single point source, but besides the point source, there is also a bright "disk," allowing the orbiting object to receive radiation not only from the central point source (whose intensity decreases with the square of the distance) but also from adjacent environmental objects, making the energy intensity displaced by the object the sum of these two.

In the framework of the law of universal gravitation, the environmental energy intensity outside the point source has no influence. However, Tesla's theory of gravity would increase the gravitational force on the object.

In the 1970s, a "strange phenomenon" was observed in spiral galaxies (like the Milky Way), which are also "bright disks." The orbital speeds of stars near the edge of the galactic disk violated the law of universal gravitation; stars closer to the center did not rotate faster. Instead, their speeds were almost the same.

Faster speeds than calculated by the law of universal gravitation would necessarily correspond to more undiscovered mass. If the law of universal gravitation is not modified, then dark matter must be hypothesized. To compensate for the speed difference between theory and observation, the hypothesized dark matter must be 5-10 times more abundant than visible matter. This is the origin of the dark matter hypothesis.

Returning to the issue of Saturn's rings, before 1980, the rotation periods of the different Saturnian rings were estimated according to the law of universal gravitation, meaning the inner rings were faster and the outer rings were slower.

Because the Saturnian rings are composed of fine ice fragments, making it difficult to distinguish them in telescopes, astronomers still do not know the rotation period of each individual ring.

The Voyager 2 probe observed large, contiguous structures in Saturn's B ring that were radial in appearance, called "spokes." The name is descriptive; colloquially, spokes are the metal rods on a bicycle wheel.

The "spoke" structures spanned multiple Saturnian rings and were distributed along the normal (perpendicular to Saturn) direction. Their rotation period was easily identifiable. To the surprise of astronomers, the dynamical mechanism of the "spokes" violated the law of universal gravitation; the outer parts were not slower, but the entire structure, like spokes on a wheel, possessed nearly the same angular velocity.

Mainstream scientists with strong "explanatory power," in order to defend the law of universal gravitation, came up with an explanation: the spokes were not attached to the rings but were suspended above them. The spokes had consistent speeds internally and externally, but the rings below them were faster on the inside and slower on the outside.

This meant the spokes and the rings below them rotated independently, without synchronization. This explanation thus ingeniously preserved the law of universal gravitation and the dark matter hypothesis.

Who was right and who was wrong? Experiment is the sole criterion for testing truth!

Professor Braun's experimental plan was to scatter radio frequency markers along the normal direction of different rings in Saturn's rings, from the outermost to the innermost. By receiving the radio frequency signals, the period and rotation speed of each ring would be determined.

The prediction of the law of universal gravitation: for each marker, from the inner ring to the outer ring, the period would increase, and the angular velocity would decrease.

Nikola Tesla's theory of gravity predicted: the angular velocities of these markers, from inner to outer, would be nearly the same.

If Tesla was correct, the phenomenon of Saturn's ring spokes, which violated the law of universal gravitation, would be exactly the same as the anomalous behavior of stars at the outer edges of the Milky Way. In other words, if Tesla's prediction was correct, there would be no need to introduce the dark matter hypothesis.

Even more interestingly, brighter rings would rotate faster than darker rings relative to theoretical calculations. This phenomenon manifests in the Milky Way (and other galaxies) as faster stellar velocities in bright spiral arms. Observational results support the aforementioned prediction, with the principle being that stars in bright spiral arms experience higher environmental radiation intensity, thus moving faster.

When different layers orbit Saturn, they do not exhibit the classical dynamical prediction of "slower on the outside, faster on the inside," but rather, like the already observed phenomenon of spokes in Saturn's B ring (and the outer regions of the Milky Way), all layers have the same angular velocity!

Saturn's rings, like "a sheet of ice," rotate synchronously as a single "wheel," with bicycle spokes that violate the law of universal gravitation seemingly "fixing" them in place!

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Poem of Collected Verses:

Falling sleet, first thought to be gathered pearls, Song, Zhao Fan

Within, small and large, they compete in difference. Song, Chen Pu

Who can discern the turning of the mechanical wheel? Song, Shi Zhengjue

A sheet of cold ice emerges from the forging furnace. Ming, Zhu Duozheng