Tethys

Tethys

the sea that lay between Laurasia and Gondwanaland, the two supercontinents formed by the first split of the larger supercontinent Pangaea. The Tethys Sea can be regarded as the predecessor of today's smaller Mediterranean

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

Tethys

(teeth -iss) The largest of the inner satellites of Saturn, having a diameter of 1050 km. It was discovered in 1684 by Giovanni Domenico Cassini. In size it is virtually the twin of the satellite Dione. Its low density of 1.2 g cm^–3 indicates that it is probably made up mainly of water ice. Tethys has a feature currently unique in the Solar System: a huge canyon system, Ithaca Chasma, extending around the globe from near the north pole down to the equator and extending farther to the south pole; its average width is 100 km and its depth is 4–5 km. There is also an enormous crater, Odysseus, 400 km in diameter at 30° N latitude, 130° W longitude: its diameter is 40% that of the satellite and greater than the diameter of Mimas. The remainder of the surface is covered in craters of a range of sizes up to 20–50 km, indicating that Tethys has suffered intense bombardment in its history. Two much smaller satellites are held in the same orbit as Tethys. Telesto travels about 60° ahead of it and Calypso follows it at the same angular distance. Telesto and Calypso are known as the Tethys Trojans. See also Table 2, backmatter.

Collins Dictionary of Astronomy © Market House Books Ltd, 2006

Tethys

[′tē·thəs]

(astronomy)

A satellite of the planet Saturn having a diameter of about 660 miles (1060 kilometers).

(geology)

A sea which existed for extensive periods of geologic time between the northern and southern continents of the Eastern Hemisphere.

A composite geosyncline from which many structures of the present Alpine-Himalayan orogenic belt were formed.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Tethys

goddess-wife of Oceanus. [Gk. Myth.: Brewer Dictionary, 1070]

See: Sea

Allusions—Cultural, Literary, Biblical, and Historical: A Thematic Dictionary. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Tethys

 

a satellite of the planet Saturn. Its diameter is approximately 1,000 km and its mean distance from the center of the planet is 295,000 km. Tethys was discovered in 1684 by the French astronomer G. Cassini.

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Tethys

 

(named for Thetis, the ancient Greek goddess of the sea), an ancient ocean basin that, during the Mesozoic period, separated the European and Siberian continents from the African and peninsular Indian continents and connected the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The name was proposed in the late 19th century by the Austrian geologist E. Suess.

The region occupied by the Tethys had formerly been called the Central Mediterranean Region by M. Neumayr; in the French literature it was called the Mésogée. The term “Tethys” was subsequently extended to the Paleozoic ocean of the same region, called the Paleotethys. The Paleogene-Neogene seas that are remnants of the Mesozoic Tethys are called the Paratethys; the present Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian seas are a relict of Paratethys.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.