2023-05-29 02:22:32
Monday, May 29, 2023 04:22 AM
Cassini’s mission data indicateNASA agency indicates that the rings of Saturn are young, perhaps only a few hundred million years old, and they could disappear in a similar time scale, as the rates of accumulation of mass, purity, and debris in the rings indicate their relatively young age and short life, and two studies show that the rings formed relatively recently and lose their mass quickly, while a third study expected its disappearance within the next hundreds of millions of years.
While no human can see Saturn Without its rings, however, in the time of the dinosaurs, the planet may not have yet acquired its iconic accessories – and the future inhabitants of Earth may know a world without them again.
Three recent studies by scientists at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley examine data from NASA’s Cassini mission and provide evidence that Saturn’s rings are young and transient—in astronomical terms, of course.
The rings are almost entirely pure ice, less than a few percent of their mass is non-ice “pollution” caused by micrometeorites, such as fragments of an asteroid smaller than a grain of sand. These are constantly colliding with ring particles and contributing debris to the material orbiting the planet. It is difficult to determine the age of the rings, because scientists have not yet determined this bombardment in order to calculate how long it should last.
Now, one of the three new studies gives a better idea of the rate of arrival of non-icy material, and therefore, how much the rings must have “polluted” since their formation. This research, which was led by the University of Colorado, Boulder, also indicates that micrometeorites don’t come as fast as they might. Scientists believe it, which means that Saturn’s gravity could pull matter more effectively into the rings, and this evidence adds to the argument that the rings cannot be exposed to this cosmic hailstorm for more than a few hundred million years – a small fraction of the age of Saturn and the adult solar system. 4.6 billion years.
This conclusion is supported by a second paper, led by Indiana University, that takes a different angle on the continuous pummeling of rings by small space rocks. The study authors identified two things that had been largely neglected in the research. Specifically, they were looking at the physics that govern the long-term evolution of rings and found Two important elements are the bombardment of micrometeorites and the way the debris from those collisions is distributed within the rings, and taking these factors into account shows that the rings could have reached their current mass in a few hundred million years, and the results also indicate that due to their being So small, it likely formed when unstable gravitational forces within the Saturnian system destroyed some of its icy moons.
“The idea that Saturn’s iconic major rings might be a modern feature of our solar system has been controversial,” said Jeff Causey, a researcher at Ames and co-author on one of the recent papers. trifecta For Cassini’s measurements that make this discovery difficult to avoid, Cosini also served as an interdisciplinary scientist on the Cassini mission to Saturn’s rings.
Saturn, then, may have been more than 4 billion years before it adopted its present form, but how long can you count on wearing the beautiful rings we know today?
The Cassini mission discovered that rings rapidly lose mass, as material falls from deeper regions of the planet. The third paper, also led by Indiana University, quantifies for the first time how quickly ring material drifts in that direction — and meteorites play a role again, their collisions uniting with ring particles. By calculating what all these streaming particles mean for their eventual disappearance into the planet, the researchers come up with some tough news for Saturn: it may lose its rings in the next few hundred million years.
“I think these results tell us that the constant bombardment by all this alien debris not only pollutes the planetary rings, but it should also weaken them over time,” said Paul Estrada, a researcher at Ames and co-author of all three studies. It may be the rings of Uranus.
Source: Technology News: NASA: Saturn’s rings are small and can disappear quickly
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