Saturn rings and tilt? According to a new study, it could be an satellite that was destroyed more than 100 million years ago.
Saturn's rings are currently considered to be about 100 million years old, much newer than the Earth itself.
Astronomers have no good reason for these rings. Nor are they used for the strange axial tilt of the planet.
It is believed that Saturn 's tilt may come from gravitational interactions with Neptune or Saturn's largest moon Titan .
But a new paper in the journal Science found that had a key value—the moment of inertia of Saturn—and proposed different theories.
Moment of inertia is related to the way mass is distributed inside the planet. "To make progress on this issue, we must determine the moment of inertia of Saturn," said lead author Professor Jack Westorm, a planetary science researcher at MIT.
Researchers used data from the Cassini spacecraft to improve the moment of inertia.
They found that although Saturn may have been synchronized with Neptune in gravity, it is not completely consistent now.
"Then we started looking for ways to get Saturn out of Neptune's resonance," Wisdom said.
After a series of simulations, they proposed a new theory: a forward-satellite put Saturn under Neptune's influence, but then disintegrates and allows it to escape.
They named the forward satellite the chrysanthemum, and they thought it might be as big as Saturn's third largest moon Titan .
"Like a butterfly's pupa, the satellite was dormant for a long time, suddenly became active, and the ring appeared," scientists speculated that at some point 200 million to 100 million years ago, the pupa butterfly became unstable and fell into a chaotic orbit around Saturn. In the end it was too close to gas giant planet and was torn apart.
The violent destruction of the pupa caused the formation of Saturn's rings, which also explains why Saturn no longer resonates with Neptune
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