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Edges of Saturn’s rings are fractal

The images recently sent by the Cassini spacecraft mission (on the NASA website http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/halloffame/) show the complex and beautiful rings of Saturn. Over the past few decades, various conjectures were advanced that Saturn’s rings are Cantor-like sets, although no convincing...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Li, Jun, Ostoja-Starzewski, Martin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer International Publishing 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4392038/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25883885
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40064-015-0926-6
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author Li, Jun
Ostoja-Starzewski, Martin
author_facet Li, Jun
Ostoja-Starzewski, Martin
author_sort Li, Jun
collection PubMed
description The images recently sent by the Cassini spacecraft mission (on the NASA website http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/halloffame/) show the complex and beautiful rings of Saturn. Over the past few decades, various conjectures were advanced that Saturn’s rings are Cantor-like sets, although no convincing fractal analysis of actual images has ever appeared. Here we focus on four images sent by the Cassini spacecraft mission (slide #42 “Mapping Clumps in Saturn’s Rings”, slide #54 “Scattered Sunshine”, slide #66 taken two weeks before the planet’s Augus’t 200’9 equinox, and slide #68 showing edge waves raised by Daphnis on the Keeler Gap) and one image from the Voyager 2’ mission in 1981. Using three box-counting methods, we determine the fractal dimension of edges of rings seen here to be consistently about 1.63 ~ 1.78. This clarifies in what sense Saturn’s rings are fractal.
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spelling pubmed-43920382015-04-16 Edges of Saturn’s rings are fractal Li, Jun Ostoja-Starzewski, Martin Springerplus Research The images recently sent by the Cassini spacecraft mission (on the NASA website http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/halloffame/) show the complex and beautiful rings of Saturn. Over the past few decades, various conjectures were advanced that Saturn’s rings are Cantor-like sets, although no convincing fractal analysis of actual images has ever appeared. Here we focus on four images sent by the Cassini spacecraft mission (slide #42 “Mapping Clumps in Saturn’s Rings”, slide #54 “Scattered Sunshine”, slide #66 taken two weeks before the planet’s Augus’t 200’9 equinox, and slide #68 showing edge waves raised by Daphnis on the Keeler Gap) and one image from the Voyager 2’ mission in 1981. Using three box-counting methods, we determine the fractal dimension of edges of rings seen here to be consistently about 1.63 ~ 1.78. This clarifies in what sense Saturn’s rings are fractal. Springer International Publishing 2015-04-01 /pmc/articles/PMC4392038/ /pubmed/25883885 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40064-015-0926-6 Text en © Li and Ostoja-Starzewski; licensee Springer. 2015 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.
spellingShingle Research
Li, Jun
Ostoja-Starzewski, Martin
Edges of Saturn’s rings are fractal
title Edges of Saturn’s rings are fractal
title_full Edges of Saturn’s rings are fractal
title_fullStr Edges of Saturn’s rings are fractal
title_full_unstemmed Edges of Saturn’s rings are fractal
title_short Edges of Saturn’s rings are fractal
title_sort edges of saturn’s rings are fractal
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4392038/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25883885
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40064-015-0926-6
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