Discovery
Immediately after the discovery of Jupiter's decametric radio emissions in 1955, attempts were made to detect a similar emission from Saturn, but with inconclusive results. The first evidence that Saturn might have an internally generated magnetic field came in 1974, with the detection of weak radio emissions from the planet at the frequency of about 1 MHz.
These medium wave emissions were modulated with a period of about 10 h 30 min, which was close to Saturn's rotation period. Nevertheless, the evidence available in the 1970s was too inconclusive and some scientists thought that Saturn might lack a magnetic field altogether, while others even speculated that the planet could lie beyond the heliopause. The first definite detection of the saturnian magnetic field was made only on September 1, 1979, when it was passed through by the Pioneer 11 spacecraft, which measured its magnetic field strength directly.
Read more about this topic: Magnetosphere Of Saturn
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“Next to the striking of fire and the discovery of the wheel, the greatest triumph of what we call civilization was the domestication of the human male.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)
“He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Your discovery of the contradiction caused me the greatest surprise and, I would almost say, consternation, since it has shaken the basis on which I intended to build my arithmetic.... It is all the more serious since, with the loss of my rule V, not only the foundations of my arithmetic, but also the sole possible foundations of arithmetic seem to vanish.”
—Gottlob Frege (1848–1925)