Saturn Does Not Float
Just because something is true in your little world, doesn’t mean it’s true everywhere.
“Did you know that if you were to put Saturn into a giant bowl of water, it will float?”
I need a big, fat “Wrong!” stamp. I hate scientific “fact” that isn’t fact.
If I had a bowl of water large enough to put Saturn into, what would actually happen?
My (unscientific) opinion is that you will not be able to get a bowl of liquid water that big because you will not get the water to stay put. Water is a liquid at room temperature, but it will freeze in space. Thus, no floating.
But things get worse! If I have an ocean of water large enough to contain Saturn, do you think it’s going to remain a flat plain? Both Saturn and the water will be pulled towards each other, eventually colliding and forming a larger, spherical planet.
The question is, would this new planet float? Hmm.
Even better: if you happened to dump enough water into this, the gravity of the added mass would cause so much pressure at its center that you've reached critical mass and begun fusing the hydrogen into helium. Your experiement has now literally exploded. All because you thought Saturn would float.
Don’t get me started on the bowl.
Not Everything Scales
Be wary when making software designs that worked in your prototype and trying to apply them to a much larger system. Multiplying a small error in your logic a hundred fold could yield very real and visible consequences.
My advice: never claim something is a sure thing because you demoed it once.
Your Saturn bath toy may float, but you just may destroy the bath tub putting Saturn in there.
Digg It!
