B. The Anomalous Orbital Mechanics of Iapetus
Like the Earth’s
Moon, Saturn’s “moon” Iapetus has an orbit whose physical mechanics
makes it next to impossible that the “moon” was “captured” by
Saturn’s gravitation as it wandered aimlessly through the solar
system. And in the case of Iapetus, it is an impossibility
acknowledged by all that it did not “fission” and separate from
Saturn early in the history of the formation of the giant ringed
planet. Ever since the astronomer Cassini first discovered the
small satellite in 1671, its orbit around Saturn has been a
mystery. Unlike all of Saturn’s other known satellites, only
Iapetus’ orbit is inclined some fifteen degrees from Saturn’s
equator; the rest of Saturn’s satellites all orbit at the equator.
And like the Earth’s moon, Saturn’s Iapetus also orbits Saturn, and
revolves on its own axis, in such a fashion that one of its
hemispheres always faces Saturn, while the other does not.642
But these are but the
least peculiar features of Iapetus’ anomalous orbital mechanics! It
is best to cite Hoagland’s summary of the other strange features of
its orbital mechanics in their entirety, to place his concluding
remarks in the wide physics context that his stunning concluding
observation deserves:
Once the (amazing) possibility is admitted that lapetus could be an artificial “moon” — and may have been deliberately inserted into such an odd orbit - the “coincidental” nature of its unique, steep inclination (relative to the other similar-sized Saturnian moons - Dione, Rhea, etc.) goes away.But, equally “coincidental” is the shape of Iapetus’ inclined orbit...and its precise distance from Saturn.Iapetus’ orbit is extremely close to being circular —
Shades of Earth’s
Moon!
with an eccentricity of only 0.0283 departing from a perfect circle by slightly less than 3%. (By comparison, our Moon’s orbital eccentricity ...is 0.0549 or ~6%...essentially twice as eccentric as Iapetus!)For an almost circular, very high inclination orbit to have formed through “random chance” is really pushing coincidence - if the agent for achieving that low eccentricity and the high inclination is supposed to be the same “random” collisional event, back when Iapetus was forming.643
Recall that such
orbital mechanics were strong arguments advanced by some scientists
for the radical notion that Earth’s Moon was an artificial
satellite that had been “braked” and “parked” into terrestrial
orbit. In other words, if one advances the argument for the Moon
having been artificially steered into
Earth orbit on the basis of its perfect circularity and the fact
that its orbital mechanics also show only one hemisphere to the
Earth, then much more so is it the case for Iapetus and
Saturn!
And, there’s more.The sharp reader will have noticed, from the preceding references, that Iapetus orbits slightly less than 60 radii away from Saturn (59.09) radii, to be exact...). This discrepancy, 0.15% - in the artificial model that precisely 60 radii was originally intended - would represent how much Iapetus has drifted since it was “parked” (as a designed “station”) in Saturn orbit. That rate of drift, either due to Saturnian/sun tides, or other forces...could give another way to estimate - other than by counting craters - roughly “when” this entire scenario in fact occurred....644
Hoagland is here
referring to the fact that Iapetus orbits Saturn some two million
miles from the planet, which is almost exactly sixty times the
radius of Saturn. And that number, sixty, should sound very
familiar:
That “ideal” Iapetus distance from Saturn just “happens” to also be base 60 - another tetrahedral number — suddenly appearing in the first Sumerian civilization on Earth some 6000 years ago... 645
In other words,
Iapetus’ orbital mechanics are massively artificial, and even bear
a connection to Sumeria!
As if this were not
enough, Hoagland even runs the numbers a bit further, in order to
drive home the point that Iapetus’ orbit simply is not explainable
on any naturalist model.
If you take the inclination of Iapetus’ orbit (~ 15 degrees) and multiply by its distance in Saturn radii (60), the result is the average of the current (Cassini probe) triaxial measurements of Iapetus’ diameter - ~ 900 miles!All these numbers - Iapetus’ size, distance from Saturn, and orbital inclination - are “independent variables.” Meaning - none of them are automatically interrelated, or mandated by any current theory of satellite formation. Yet, for some reason, they have all come together in Iapetus... this one bizarre “moon”...orbiting Saturn. This simply makes no sense, and the odds of it happening coincidentally - especially, resulting in the actual diameter of Iapetus expressed in miles! Are (really!) “astronomical” —Unless this was designed!646
But statistically
improbable orbital mechanics for a natural satellite are the least substantial arguments that may be advanced in
favor of the artificiality of Iapetus. To see why, one must
actually look at Iapetus itself, a
vision that was only possible in very recent history, with the
Cassini probe’s mission to the ringed planet, and its many
extremely unusual photographs of the
“moon”.