Current Event Brief

The current event briefing that will be discussed throughout this paper is about huge landslides that were found on Saturn’s Moon documented on August 1, 2012. According to BBC News and scientists, Saturn’s Moon has very large landslides which are moving faster than normal and continue to keep going. They base their findings and assumptions on what they have seen on Earth and Mars so far. This is pretty much all they can go by is comparing what happens here on earth to what is happening on that moon and by using technology of course. The cause of this landslide is still in debate and question, but assumptions are made that it is caused by the heating of icy surfaces that causes the landslide to continue and to become larger. The name of Saturn’s moon is called Lapetus. The geology of Lapetus is shaped more like a squashed sphere with the equator of this moon is much larger than its poles. One side of Lapetus is covered in dark material, and the other side is much brighter. The moon also has no atmosphere and appears to have very large sized craters in 25km in depth. This moon was discovered by Giovanni Cassini in 1671. Cassini also noticed dark-light difference in this moon which is what made it unique in his discoveries. Scientist refers Lapetus as the yin and yang of Saturn's moons because of its half and half coloring. The activity being examined on this moon makes it to have the most giant and frequent landslides in the solar system aside from Planet Mars. These landslides and craters have created mountain like ridges that are approximately measured to be 13 miles high and are much larger than Earth’s Mount Everest. When they were looking for stress factors on the moons ice is how they discovered the 30 massive landslides. 17 of which are along the crater walls and 13 along the giant equatorial ridge. The scientists are going to continue to run test to see how this is happening and if other factors could play a role in this. The assumptions made