spin rings Saturn around the equator of the planet, and it serves as evidence that the planet rotates in an oblique direction, as it rotates at an angle of 26.7 degrees relative to the plane around the sun, and therefore astronomers believe that this tilt comes from gravitational interactions with its neighbor Neptune.
Astronomers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and elsewhere conducted a research study on the causes of the rings that characterize Saturn, and the study found that while the two planets may have once coincided, Saturn has since escaped the clouds of Neptune, and that a missing moon is responsible for Planetary realignment.
In a study published today in the scientific journal Science, the team suggests that Saturn, which today hosts 83 moons, was home to at least one additional moon, called Chrysalis. The planet is in such a way that it maintains its tilt, or “skew”, in line with Neptune.
The study showed that regarding 160 million years ago, Chrysalis became unstable and got very close to its planet, and the loss of the moon was enough to remove Saturn from the grip of Neptune and leave it with its current tilt.
The researchers believe that while most of Chrysalis’ fractured body may have had an impact with Saturn, a small portion of its fragments might remain suspended in orbit, eventually smashing into small pieces of ice to form the planet’s distinctive rings.
Therefore, the missing satellite can explain two ancient mysteries, the present-day tilt of Saturn and the age of its rings, which were previously estimated to be around 100 million years, much younger than the planet itself.
“Just like a butterfly cocoon, this satellite had been dormant for a long time and suddenly became active, and the rings appeared,” says Jack Wisdom, professor of planetary sciences at MIT and lead author of the new study.
Co-authors include Rola Dubok of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Burkard Melitzer of UC Berkeley, William Hubbard of the University of Arizona, Frances Nimo and Brenna Downey of UC Santa Cruz, and Richard French of Wellesley College.
In the early 2000s, scientists put forward the idea that Saturn’s tilted axis is the result of a gravitational bond with Neptune, but observations by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017, put a new twist on the problem. Scientists found that Titan, Saturn’s largest satellite, was migrating away from Saturn at a faster-than-expected clip, at a rate of regarding 11 cm per year. On Gravity with Neptune.
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