What is Hyperion Anomaly? Why can't it be solved?

Hyperion is one of the 82 natural satellites of Saturn (also known as Saturn VII!).

I say 82, but Saturn is a planet with 43 satellites according to some sources and 145 satellites according to others. 

The reason why there are so many different information about its moons is that there are many celestial bodies, big and small, travelling around Saturn. 

As far as I understand, astronomers have not been able to decide which of these objects should be called satellites and which should only be called meteorites. 

Because only 13 of these satellites are over 50 kilometres in diameter. 

For comparison, the Moon, the natural satellite of the Earth, has a diameter of 3474.8 km.

In other words, Saturn's satellites are more like meteorites.

Saturn, as you know, is also a planet with ice rings around it.

In other words, Saturn has a very different appearance compared to the other planets in the solar system, we can also call it a strange planet.

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Saturn's oddities don't stop there.

One thing that has puzzled scientists for a long time is Hyperion's orbital movements.

Normally unexplained by Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton, Mercury's orbital motion around the Sun was solved by Albert Einstein's principle of general relativity.

Mercury's orbit, which is very close to the gravitational field of the sun, was shifting after the period when it was close to the sun due to the bends in space-time, and no one had found an answer to the cause of this shift until Einstein. 

And today, even with Einstein's space-time bending, Hyperion's orbital movements cannot be solved!

There is something strange about this satellite!

Hyperion has a chaotic orbit. The wobble in its axis of rotation is so great that even with the most modern computers, this rotational motion cannot be modelled, and it is not known where it will be in its orbit even after a day, and therefore space scientists are very confused about this issue.

How is it possible that in this century, with such great technological possibilities, the orbital movements of a satellite the size of a meteorite cannot be precisely calculated?

Strangely enough, why even Einstein's principle of general relativity, which we trust so much, is not enough to explain these movements?

Is there some other effect affecting the orbital movements that we have not been able to find until today?

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Yes, anomalies in the motions of larger celestial bodies in space have already been observed before.

Some stars in some galaxies were found to rotate at different speeds when they should rotate faster or slower depending on their position in the galaxy, and this was attributed to an undetectable excess mass in the galaxy.

Yes, this invisible mass is called dark matter, although its existence has not been detected so far. 

Don't confuse it with dark energy; dark energy is thought to be the energy responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe. 

It is also a type of energy that has not been proven to exist, but it has nothing to do with dark matter.

Galaxy anomalies are probably caused by what is called dark matter.

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Could dark matter, or better called invisible matter, or perhaps transparent matter, be affecting the orbital motion of Saturn's moon Hyperion?

But this matter is already invisible, and the celestial events that make one suspect its existence are not so many. 

Besides, if dark matter is so effective, would it find Hyperion, Saturn's moon? If it exists, wouldn't it be expected to be effective on other celestial bodies as well?

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In fact, with its dimensions of (360 km) x (266 km) x (205 km), Hyperion resembles an American football. It is a flat long satellite. 

It has an average density of 0.544 grams/cm3. In other words, it is lighter than water, almost half the density of water and probably has a porous structure. It is thought to be composed of dense ice masses like Saturn's other moons and rings.

In fact, the Voyager 2 spacecraft also photographed Hyperion as it passed near Saturn, but these photographs did not provide much information about the satellite's surface because they were taken from a great distance.

In 2005, closer pictures taken by the Cassini spacecraft with more advanced cameras showed that Hyperion has an unusual surface shape.

Could this surface shape be the cause of these inexplicable shifts in its orbit?

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Or, if there are things around it that can produce frictional forces like the atmosphere of the earth, maybe they can also have an effect.

Also, if those things around it were in movements with a variable density structure like our atmosphere, then maybe we could say that orbital shifts occur with these effects.

If it were such an environment, we could say that this is why a satellite with such a strange surface and in the shape of an American football is making meaningless orbital movements.

But we're talking about the vacuum of space. 

There is no air around Hyperion in which it moves! 

Therefore, it makes orbital movements only under the effect of mutual gravitational attraction with other celestial bodies in the neighbourhood.

Of course, there is also the effect of the impact effects of meteorites coming from outer space and hitting the surface on the orbital movements.

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The largest crater on Hyperion has a diameter of 121.57 km and a depth of 10.2 km.

The Himalayas are 8.8 km (8849 metres) above sea level. The Mariana Trench, the deepest trench in the world's oceans, has a depth of 11 km (11033 metres). 

On the one hand, there is a huge earth, and on the other, a meteorite, which is relatively small compared to the earth, called a satellite. 

It is an asteroid, but its surface shape has such large elevation differences!

It is also thought that Hyperion may have been shattered by a meteorite that once came from the vacuum of space and hit it, and that it is the remains of the collision. 

While it was a 350 km -1000 km diameter satellite, it is said that it may have shrunk to its present size with the collision. 

Of course, these ideas are based on analyses of other moons in the vicinity. 

Saturn's largest moon is Titan, and traces of fragments from Hyperion were found on Titan. 

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Anyway, the topic is not Hyperion's past or the Titan satellite, but Hyperion's orbital anomaly.

In 21 days, Hyperion orbits around Saturn at a distance of approximately 1 million 481 thousand kilometres, and at the same time, it makes a vague rotation around itself in different axes. 

If you add the effect of mass interactions with other satellites, especially the effect of Titan, to all these different movements, you come up with the unpredictable orbital movements.

Nevertheless, despite all the complexities, there are now supercomputers that can be built, and these computers have very large processing volumes. 

Therefore, it should have been expected that these orbital motions could somehow be modelled by computers. 

But they can't! 

No matter how much one tries to predict it, Hyperion will be in a completely different place and position tomorrow.

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In this case, there are some things that need to be questioned.

1. Could it be that Einstein's general relativity has some missing pieces? Why general relativity is not enough to explain Hyperion's orbital movements?

2. Could dark matter be concentrated in certain places? Could this be the reason why Hyperion shows anomalies in its orbital motions?

3. Could there be some matter around Hyperion that cannot be detected from here? Maybe we need to send another spacecraft near Hyperion to solve this problem, maybe some of these ice masses that we cannot detect from here are constantly falling on the surface of Hyperion and affecting its orbital motions! And we keep thinking that there is an anomaly!

4. As in quantum mechanics, can celestial bodies sometimes get stuck in their own heads? Actually, there are scientists who think so. It's called the chaos theorem. In the Schrödinger formula, the behaviour of quantum particles is statistically determined, and it may be necessary to apply the same to the motion of this satellite. More theoretical work is needed in this area.

5. Some things, such as the number Pi (π), have a fraction that extends to infinity. Could Hyperion's orbit be an orbital motion in such a pattern? If so, then it may never be possible to know where the satellite will be in its orbit tomorrow.

Scientists have been pondering on this anomaly for a long time, including those who say that the wave formula in the Schrödinger formula is insufficient, let's take the square or cube of the waveform.

Unfortunately, no one has yet found an answer to the subject.

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Forget about Hyperion's orbital anomaly, tell me about the CHP!

I swear, it seems to me that the anomaly in the CHP is much more difficult to solve. 

Scientists will eventually solve Hyperion's orbital anomaly, but I don't think anyone can find the solution for the CHP.

Stay with science.

Love and respect to everyone from Moscow