Iapetus was made famous in the novel
2001: A Space Odyssey, being the home of the third monolith, and the gateway for David Bowman's incredible voyage to the stars. Arthur C. Clarke picked Iapetus over all the other moons of Saturn because of its curious coloration.
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| Iapetus' Equatorial Ridge |
Half of the moon is a brilliant white, while the other is as black as coal. Scientists are still not entirely sure as to the reason for this, but Iapetus' dual color scheme is not the most unusual feature of the moon. The Cassini probe discovered a perfectly straight equatorial ridge running along a large portion of the moon, with some of the peaks reaching as high as 20 kilometers. Perfectly straight geologic features are not a common occurrence, and there have been many theories as to how the ridge formed.
In a recent paper,
scientists believe that they have the most likely reason for the ridge's existence. The mountains are too steep to have been formed through traditional mountain building through plate tectonics, and Iapetus shows no signs of ever being volcanically active. The paper states that an impact between Iapetus and another object that kicked off a lot of debris is the most likely source of the ridge. The debris would have entered into orbit around Iapetus' equator and eventually fallen down, forming the ridge. So, there may have been a time when Iapetus had a ring system. Given that
we recently discovered an asteroid with rings, a moon with rings doesn't seem so absurd.
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