Try to imagine Saturn without its distinctive rings. Now imagine two big ice moons getting closer and closer until – boom. chaos. What was once solid has now become liquid. Diamond shards scattered in the darkness. Many ice fragments that fell near Saturn, settled there and danced around the gas giant in unison, eventually forming majestic heavy disks on the planet.
This stunning sight comes as part of an effort to answer one of the solar system’s greatest mysteries: where did Saturn’s rings come from, and when were they formed?
A study published this week in Astrophysical Journaltend to the idea that they are not billions of years old, but were formed in the recent astronomical past – perhaps due to the collision of two simple size The visible moons were frozen several hundred million years ago.
“I’m sure it would be great to see dinosaurs with a pretty good telescope,” he said. Yakub Kegerisa research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, is one of the study’s authors.
2023-09-29 04:29:46
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