Ronan the Accuser and Nebula


Each of the little Space eggs resides within its own ring arc--which is a fragmentary ring of Saturn. One hypothesis states that glittering ice crystals swarming around in the ring arc might be floating down to the surface of Methone, filling in its impact craters or other rough topography. This is something that is thought to have occurred on two other small, icy moons of Saturn--Atlas and Pan. Icy stuff swarming around in Saturn's rings apparently piled up around each moonlet's equator. There was a time when Earth had no Moon. About 4.5 billion years ago, when our ancient Solar System was still forming, the dark night sky above our primordial planet was moonless. At this time, the Earth was about 60 percent formed, although it did have a differentiated crust, mantle, and core. This was a very chaotic and violent era in our Solar System's past, with planets first forming out of blobs of primordial dust, gas, and rock. During this era, frequently likened to a "cosmic shooting gallery", collisions between the still-forming planets were commonplace. Orbits were not as orderly as they are now. Comets are actually bright, streaking invaders from far, far away that carry within their mysterious, frozen hearts the most pristine of primordial ingredients that contributed to the formation of our Solar System about 4.6 billion years ago. This primeval mix of frozen material has been preserved in the pristine "deep-freeze" of our Solar System's darkest, most distant domains. Comets are brilliant and breathtaking spectacles that for decades were too dismissively called "dirty snowballs" or "icy dirt balls", depending on the particular astronomer's point of view. These frozen alien objects zip into the inner Solar System, where our planet is situated, from their distant home beyond Neptune. It is generally thought that by acquiring an understanding of the ingredients that make up these ephemeral, fragile celestial objects, a scientific understanding of the mysterious ingredients that contributed to the precious recipe that cooked up our Solar System can be made.