New study claims Saturn's rings could be the same age as the planet

Sunday 22nd December 2024 12:28 AM

Scientists suggest that the apparent youth of Saturn's rings may be due to resistance to pollution rather than a young age of formation.

This may seem strange, but this team of scientists hypothesizes that Saturn's rings could be intact not because they are young, but because they resist dirt.

After all, how old are Saturn's rings?

Saturn's rings have long been thought to be between 100 and 400 million years old.based on more than a decade of observations made by NASA's Cassini spacecraft before its disappearance in 2017, and consistent with the hypothesis that this bombardment by single-celled micrometeoroids – particles of space rock more Smaller than a grain of sand – acts to darken the rings over time.

“The energetic impact of unchopped micrometeoroids on Saturn's rings was used to estimate the ages of the rings.” Declare the authors of the study.

However, Cassini images showed no evidence of ring darkening due to the impact of these micrometeoroids, which led scientists to conclude that the rings formed much later than the planet.

This new research suggests that Saturn's rings could be the same age as the planet, contrary to what was previously known.

Using computer models, Ryuki Hyodo of the Tokyo Institute of Science and his team demonstrated that micrometeoroids vaporize after hitting the rings, leaving little or no dark, dirty residue.

This discovery collapses the theory that scientists had about the age of the rings.

The researchers found that the resulting charged particles are absorbed by Saturn or space, keeping the rings intact and questioning the baby ring theory. These results were published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

So Hyodo, who is also the lead author of this study, said it was possible that Saturn's rings lie somewhere between the two extreme ages – or more or less 2.25 billion years.

The solar system was much more chaotic during its formative years, with large planet-like objects migrating and interacting everywhere, exactly the kind of scenario that would be conducive to the production of Saturn's rings. Therefore, “given the evolutionary history of the solar system, it is more likely that the rings formed closer” to the early days of Saturnconcludes Hyodo.

News reference:

Hyodo, R., Genda, H. & Madeira, G. Resistance to particle pollution of Saturn's rings during micrometeoroid impact. Nature Geoscience (2024).