Jupiter’s rings are so thin they were only seen by the Voyager spacecraft in 1979.
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA — Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar system. This planet is made up of gas, and is twice as large as all the other planets combined in our solar system.
Maybe not many know that Jupiter has a thin ring that resembles a chopstick. Ring Jupiter this is different from the magnificent rings of the Planet Saturn. Jupiter’s rings are made up of microscopic dust particles. While Saturn’s rings, which consist of chunks of ice and substantial rock.
Jupiter’s disks are so fragile that scientists didn’t even notice it until 1979, when the Voyager 1 spacecraft and some strategically positioned sunlight finally made it visible.
Now, scientists may have found the answer to why Jupiter has such a disk. Their findings are available on arXiv and will be published soon on Planetary Science Journal.
Jupiter has 79 different moons. One of Jupiter’s moons is a prime target for the search for life beyond Earth. This moon orbiting Jupiter may be the reason why Jupiter doesn’t have rings as majestic as Saturn’s.
“We found that Jupiter’s Galilean moons, one of the largest moons in our solar system, would very quickly destroy any large rings that might have formed,” said Stephen Kane, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Riverside, who led the study. , Saturday (23/7/2022).
As a result, he said, Jupiter is unlikely to have a large ring. Kane and his colleagues think that any material that tries to form a Saturn-like ring around the gas giant will be crushed by the gravitational pull of Jupiter’s orbiting moons, particularly the four largest Galilean moons.
“The big planets form big moons, which prevents them from having substantial rings,” Kane said.
