Saturn’s Rings Could Be ‘Remains’ of Moon That Came Too Close

beautiful rings Saturn this is the hallmark of the gas giant. While they’re not the only ones in the solar system – Uranus and Neptune have their own traits too – they are definitely the most iconic.

But no one who looks at them imagines they are seeing the remains of an ancient satellite orbiting the planet. Or at least that’s what a new study published in the journal Science suggests.

To arrive at this conclusion, the researchers used data collected by NASA’s Cassini mission that orbited the planet between 2004 and 2017. What initially intrigued astronomers was the planet’s tilt.

A planet’s deviation of about 27 degrees from its axis could be a gravitational effect from its neighbors, specifically Neptune, but the orbit told a different story: the two neighbors were already separated years ago.

But the data pointed the way to a new hypothesis. They determined that Saturn’s rings must have appeared about 160 million years ago – it may seem like a lot, but for comparison, Saturn is 4.5 billion years old.

This means that all this massive amount of material orbiting the gas giant did not spread out in the disks we know today. It was most likely once assembled within a month.

The researchers, named Chrysalis, concluded that this ancient moon came too close to the planet and was shattered under the influence of strong gravity. The lost moon theory also explains the unusual tilt of the giant.

“Like a butterfly’s chrysalis, this satellite was dormant and then suddenly it became active and the rings appeared,” says Jack Wisdom, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the study.

ARTICLE Science: doi.org/10.1126/science.abq3184