Saturn’s rings have baffled astronomers since they were first observed by a telescope.
But a team of researchers now believe they have discovered the origin of the mystical loops.
A new set of supercomputer simulations suggests that a massive collision between two icy moons a few hundred million years ago could have led to their formation.
And it could help explain why the rings appear much ‘younger’ than the planet itself.
The latest high-quality measurements of Saturn come from the Cassini spacecraft, which spent 13 years studying the planet and its systems after entering Saturn’s orbit in 2004.
Saturn’s rings have baffled astronomers since they were first observed by a telescope. But a team of researchers now believe they have discovered the origin of the mystical loops
A new set of supercomputer simulations suggests that a massive collision between two icy moons a few hundred million years ago could have led to their formation
The spacecraft collected precise data by passing and even diving along the gap between Saturn’s rings and the planet itself.
Cassini found that the rings are almost pure ice and have accumulated very little dust pollution since their formation, indicating that they formed during the most recent period of the solar system’s life.
Intrigued by the youth of the rings, scientists from NASA, as well as from the universities of Durham and Glasgow, have modeled what various collisions between progenitor moons might have looked like.
These simulations were performed at a resolution more than 100 times higher than previous studies, giving scientists the best insight into the history of the Saturn system.
Dr. Vincent Eke, from the University of Durham, said: ‘We tested a hypothesis for the recent formation of Saturn’s rings and found that an impact from icy moons could send enough material to Saturn to form the rings we see now .
Cassini found that the rings are almost pure ice and have accumulated very little dust pollution since their formation, indicating that they formed during the most recent period of the solar system’s life.
“This scenario obviously leads to ice-rich rings, because when the progenitor moons collide, the rock in the cores of the colliding bodies becomes less widely dispersed than the overlying ice.”
Saturn’s rings today are close to the planet within what is known as the Roche limit – the farthest orbit where a planet’s gravity is powerful enough to disintegrate larger masses of rock or ice that come closer.
Material further away can clump together and form moons.
By simulating nearly 200 different versions of the impact, the research team found that a wide range of collision scenarios could spread the right amount of ice to Saturn’s Roche limit, where it could settle into rings just as icy as those from Saturn today.
Because other elements of the system have a mixed composition of ice and rock, alternative explanations have failed to explain why there would be virtually no rock present in Saturn’s rings.
The findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal.