Decay – A satellite torn apart by gravitational forces could have given rise to the gas giant’s icy rings.
“Two servants helping ancient and slow Saturn make its way…” With these words Galileo described in 1610 the bright spots around Saturn that he was the first to distinguish thanks to his revolutionary telescope. It will be necessary to wait until 1655 for astronomer Christian Huygens to realize that these are concentric rings. Nearly 400 years later, space exploration has revealed a great deal of information about the structure, size, and even mass of these rings, but the mystery of their origin remains unsolved. A team of astrophysicists led by scientists from MIT publishes in the journal Science New hypothesis: The rings will be memories of an icy moon that broke off 100 million years ago.
The Saturn’s rings It is made up of more than 99% water ice. “So much so that we can use them as ice cubes.”Aurélien Crida jokes, mister…
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