Saturn’s rings seen by Cassini ‘young, short-lived’

Saturn’s unique rings, the largest and most impressive in the solar system, are not only young, but may not have a long lifespan, according to a new study.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) presented three papers on its homepage dealing with the timing and lifetime of Saturn’s rings based on data collected by the Saturn probe ‘Cassini’ for 13 years.

These papers were written with the participation of NASA’s ‘Ames Research Center’ scientists, and as a result of comprehensively considering the mass and ‘purity’ of Saturn’s rings, the speed and impact of added external substances, and so on, they are “young. and short-lived” from an astronomical point of view. He came to a conclusion.

According to NASA, Saturn’s rings are made of almost pure ice. Micrometeoroids, such as asteroid fragments smaller than a grain of sand, enter the rings and constitute non-icy ‘contaminants’, accounting for only a fraction of the total mass.

This contaminant is constantly colliding with the particles in the ring to form the material of the ring that formed around Saturn, I looked to see if it was done.

This confirms that Saturn’s gravity effectively pulls the micrometeoroids into the ring, and provides evidence that it would not have been exposed to such micrometeoroid storms for more than hundreds of millions of years in its 4.6 billion year history. the solar system and Saturn.

A paper published in the planetary science journal ‘Icarus’ analyzes the collision of micrometeoroids and the distribution of the materials produced in this process within the rings, and shows that it only took hundreds of millions of years to reach the current state, thereby destroying Saturn. support the relatively young circle of

Another paper published in Icarus focused on how long Saturn’s rings will last.

On September 15, 2017, Cassini, which completed its mission by plunging into Saturn’s atmosphere and oxidizing it, found that material from Saturn’s innermost rings is rapidly losing mass as it falls toward the exoplanet has been measured.

The research team suggests that the meteoroids in the ring collide with existing particles and the way the material produced through this escape is combined to form a kind of conveyor belt that transports the ring material towards the planet, suggesting the ring could disappear in hundreds of millions of years

Paul Estrada, a researcher at the Ames Center who co-authored the three papers, said: “These results suggest that external debris not only contaminates the ring by continuing to collide with existing particles, but also reduces’ r cylch. “The dimming and dark rings of Uranus and Neptune could also be the result of this process,” he said. “Saturn’s relatively large and icy rings show that it is still young (not old).” he added.

Science Team press@jeonpa.co.kr

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