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2009-10-07

Spitzer's Seven Rings of Saturn

Sources as authoritative as NASA number the rings of Saturn at seven, though recent research discovered another major ring much further out from the planet. This last ring, according to today's CNN story, was just discovered using the Spitzer Space Telescope (no relation to the former New York governor's astral inspiration).  That ring is so far out (3.7 million miles out from the planet), so large (300 Saturns would fit inside it), and so thin (just ice and dust, so thin that it wasn't noticed until now), that it hardly counts in anthropomorphic terms.

The Magical Number is, without a doubt, a thoroughly anthropomorphic quantity.

Image from Wikipedia Commons.

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