These mysteries about Saturn will finally be cleared

The scientific studies Allow you to regularly learn more aboutUniverseand in particular our solar system. Recently, someone was finally able to explain two Gas about Saturn.

A new interpretation of Saturn’s inclination

The study that we will talk about today was published in the American Journal Science This Thursday, September 15, 2022 and The fruit of the hard work of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who have studied the tilt of Saturn. In fact, the sixth planet in the solar system that starts from the Sun is especially known for its odd tilt of 26.7 degrees compared to the perpendicular one: a hitherto unexplained phenomenon especially surprising for a gaseous planet, which should have remained perpendicular in its orbit.

By noticing it Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, was slowly moving away from the planet which MIT researchers then hypothesized. According to them, this changed the axis of rotation of the ringed planet. So much so that it was once tilted 36 degrees. How to reduce this tendency? According to the researchers, this is due to a major event: More than 80 other natural satellites of Saturn would have come so close that the gravitational forces at work would have eventually dislodged the moon.

The result: a planet with a tilted axis of rotation and the creation of these famous rings.

The origin and age of Saturn’s rings finally discovered?

Here’s a second mystery that could have cleared up the study’s authors, who have created no fewer than 390 simulations to try to understand the phenomenon. Then it turns out that the most likely hypothesis is that It’s a moon covered in icy water that would have cracked as it approached Saturn. Thus appeared hundreds of thousands of pieces of rock covered with ice, which can measure several tens of meters and extend up to 300,000 kilometers around the second largest planet in the solar system, after Jupiter.

Moreover, this hypothesis will confirm the doubts that have been maintained by the scientific community for nearly two decades: since Galileo discovered Saturn about 400 years ago, it was believed that its rings could be as old as the sun, being born at the same time as the Sun. About 4.5 billion years ago. But the Cassini probe, Sent in 1997 and entered into orbit around Saturn from 2004, led to the assumption that they would in fact be more recent.

A hypothesis that will be confirmed by a new MIT study, which estimates that The icy moon dislocation dates back more than 160 million years. On the scale of the universe, it’s very modern. This virtual moon is named Chrysalis (“Chrysalide”, in French) by researchers: Like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, icy bits of rock had spurted out from the satellite. A very beautiful picture of what could be a discovery fundamental to understanding the history of Saturn, which, for the record, has such a low density that it can float on water.