Massive Collision Between Icy Moons May Explain Formation of Saturn’s Rings, New Study Finds

New supercomputer simulations have found that a massive collision between two icy moons a few hundred million years ago may have led to the formation of Saturn’s mysterious rings, according to the Daily Mail.

The latest high-quality measurements of Saturn came from the Cassini spacecraft, which spent 13 years studying the planet and its systems after entering Saturn’s orbit in 2004.

The spacecraft captured accurate data by passing and even diving into the gap between Saturn’s rings and the planet itself.

Cassini found that the rings are almost pure ice, and very little dust pollution has accumulated since their formation, indicating that they formed during the last period of the life of the solar system.

Saturn’s rings aroused the interest of scientists from NASA, as well as the Universities of Durham and Glasgow, as they designed a model of what different collisions between previous moons might look like.

The simulations were conducted with more than 100 times higher resolution than previous studies, giving scientists the best insights into the history of the Saturn system.

Dr Vincent Ecke, from Durham University, said: “We tested the hypothesis of the recent formation of Saturn’s rings, and found that the impact of icy moons is capable of sending enough material near Saturn to form the rings we see now.”

Today, Saturn’s rings are located near the planet within what is known as the “Rukh limit”, the farthest orbit in which the planet’s gravitational force is strong enough to disintegrate objects larger than rocks or ice that approach it.

Material in more distant orbits could clump together to form moons.

By simulating nearly 200 different versions of the impact, the research team discovered that a wide range of impact scenarios could scatter the right amount of ice to Saturn’s “Roche limit,” where it could settle into icy rings like Saturn’s rings today.

The results were published in the Astrophysical Journal.