Saturn’s rings could have evolved from the debris of two progenitor icy moons that collided and shattered a few hundred million years ago; debris that didn’t end up in the rings could also have contributed to the formation of some of Saturn’s present-day moons, according to new simulations carried out by planetary researcher from the University of Glasgow, the University of Oslo, NASA’s Ames Research Center, SETI Institute and Durham University.
Most contemporary high-quality measurements about Saturn have come from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft that spent 13 years studying the planet and its systems after entering Saturn’s orbit in 2004.
An analysis of Cassini data indicated that Saturn’s rings were much younger than first thought.
To investigate this further, Dr. Jacob Kegerreis from NASA’s Ames Research Center and his colleagues modeled what different collisions between precursor moons in Saturn’s system may have looked like.
“There’s so much we still don’t know about the Saturn system, including its moons that host environments that might be suitable for life,” Dr. Kegerreis said.
“So, it’s exciting to use big simulations like these to explore in detail how they could have evolved.”
The team’s simulations were conducted at a resolution more than 100 times higher than previous such studies, using the open-source simulation code SWIFT and giving scientists their best insights into the Saturn system’s history.
Saturn’s rings today live close to the giant planet, within what’s known as the Roche limit — the farthest orbit where a planet’s gravitational force is powerful enough to disintegrate larger bodies of rock or ice that get any closer. Material orbiting farther out could clump together to form moons.
By simulating almost 200 different versions of the impact, the researchers discovered that a wide range of collision scenarios could scatter the right amount of ice into Saturn’s Roche limit, where it could…
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