REAL LIFE NEWS: IAPETUS LANDSLIDES
by Hazed
Saturn’s moon Iapetus doesn’t sound like a very safe place to visit, because it often experiences huge landslides and avalanches. Sturzstroms or “long-runout landslides” move faster and farther than geological models predict they should. They have been seen on Earth and on Mars, but they are rare elsewhere in the Solar System.
Scientists have debated the causes of these landslides, but now images from the Cassini space mission suggest that heating of icy surfaces helps the landslides keep going.