Saturn’s rings may have been created by a collision between its moons

An article published on Wednesday (27) in the scientific journal Astrophysical Journal Presents a new theory about the formation of Saturn’s distinctive rings. According to the new study, it appeared as a result of a brutal collision between two icy moons.

For those in a hurry:

• Saturn is one of the planets of great scientific importance.
• Various research attempts to uncover the mystery of the origin of the distinctive rings that surround it;
• A new study, based on hundreds of computer simulations, attributes the formation of these structures to a possible collision between two moons.
• Currently, this is the planet with the highest number of moons in the solar system, with 145 at last official count.

The researchers relied on data collected by NASA’s Cassini mission, which orbited the planet for 13 years, between 2004 and 2017. The probe discovered that the material that makes up the rings, which was first observed by Galileo Galilei in 1610, consists of completely pure ice fragments. Not contaminated with dust. This suggests that they must be very young, only a few million years old, which is almost nothing compared to the solar system’s age of 4.5 billion years.

Using powerful supercomputers, researchers and experts from NASA and Durham University simulated about 200 collision scenarios that could give rise to these structures.

The collision would have released enough material to form Saturn’s rings

The results revealed that a collision between two large moons like Dione and Rhea (which have diameters equivalent to a third of the diameter of Earth’s moon and slightly less than half its diameter, respectively) could explain the presence of these rings.

“We tested the hypothesis of the recent formation of Saturn’s rings and found that the impact of icy moons is able to send enough material near the planet to form the rings we see now,” said Vincent Ecke, associate professor in the Department of Physics. / Institute of Computational Cosmology at Durham University, in A statement.

While the rings are made up almost entirely of ice, scientists believe Saturn’s moons have rocky cores. The simulations confirmed that the ice fragments and rock pieces would spread in different ways after the collision, allowing the rocks to come together to form new moons while the ice would disperse into orbits closer to Saturn’s surface.

Simulations show that several hypothetical collisions would pump out a lot of ice at low altitudes, while clumping rocks together in higher orbits.

“This scenario naturally leads to ice-rich rings, because when parent moons collide with each other, the rocks at the core of the colliding objects are dispersed less widely than the overlying ice,” Ecke said.

It also highlights the location Space.com websiteSaturn’s ice-covered moons are of great interest to scientists, as some of them, such as Enceladus, may provide suitable conditions for the emergence of life. There is still a lot that scientists don’t know about Saturn’s history, and the results of this study are just a small step toward solving the planet’s mysteries.