Saturn's rings could be much older than scientists first thought

[Admin]

Saturn's rings might not be younger than the dinosaurs as recently suggested, but nearly as old as the giant planet itself at billions of years in age, a new study says.

Saturn's rings could be much older than scientists first thought : Read more

 

[whoknows]

The headline and the article don't sync.

How much is really known about Saturn's sub structure? Do we know with any confidence that there is not liquid water present in a pressurized environment?

 

[Classical Motion]

The helical trajectories of the ringlets are much more a ponderment for me, than the age.

 

[whoknows]

The helical trajectories of the ringlets are much more a ponderment for me, than the age.

For instance?

 

[Classical Motion]

Close up images of the ringlets use to be easy to find. And images of moon tracks and trails in debris fields use to be easy to find.

But today they seem to be missing from our search engines.

Maybe one might find those images in a library. Ringlets have helical trajectories around Jupiter, not ellipses. And the moon debris tracks indicate a helical orbit, not an elliptical orbit.

Perhaps libraries still have a valid function.

Our search engines are fickle.

 

[whoknows]

The headline and the article don't sync.

How much is really known about Saturn's sub structure? Do we know with any confidence that there is not liquid water present in a pressurized environment?

Science should be able to be backed up by predictions. The latter might explain so much.

 

[Torbjorn Larsson]

The model may be useful but got immediate criticism:

However, the debate over the age of the rings is likely to continue. Sascha Kempf, an associate professor of physics at the University of Colorado Boulder who led a 2023 study suggesting that Saturn's rings are no older than 400 million years old, isn't convinced by the new findings.

Kempf told the New Scientist that his team used a more complex method for estimating ages that relied on more than just ring pollution efficiency and included the time it takes for material to arrive and disappear.

"We are pretty certain that this is not really telling us that we have to go back to the drawing board," Kempf said.

Lotfi Ben-Jaffel, a researcher at the Paris Institute of Astrophysics in France who wasn't involved in either study, told New Scientist that the new research suggests the rings are older than has been claimed in recent years but added that Hyodo's team still needs to improve their modeling to give a more precise age estimate.

"It represents a positive step toward the missing modeling effort required to properly handle the fundamental problem of the formation and evolution of a planetary ring system," Ben-Jaffel said.

https://www.livescience.com/space/s...-the-origin-of-saturns-rings-new-study-claims

 

[Torbjorn Larsson]

Ringlets have helical trajectories around Jupiter, not ellipses. And the moon debris tracks indicate a helical orbit, not an elliptical orbit.

Moons and ring particles are essentially on Keplerian (elliptical) orbits.

The smaller, easily charged dust particles - like those produced here - can be put on spiral trajectories in Saturn's magnetic field.

How much is really known about Saturn's sub structure? Do we know with any confidence that there is not liquid water present in a pressurized environment?

The article is not about Saturn, but its rings.

Water ice clouds begin at a level where the pressure is about 2.5 bar and extend down to 9.5 bar, where temperatures range from 185 to 270 K. Intermixed in this layer is a band of ammonium hydrosulfide ice, lying in the pressure range 3–6 bar with temperatures of 190–235 K. Finally, the lower layers, where pressures are between 10 and 20 bar and temperatures are 270–330 K, contains a region of water droplets with ammonia in aqueous solution.[62]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn

 

[whoknows]

The article is not about Saturn, but its rings.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn

I asked "How much is really known about Saturn's sub structure? Do we know with any confidence that there is not liquid water present in a pressurized environment?

Enceladus was assumed to be frozen solid, until within the last 2 decades when plumes were observed and new ideas had to be generated. Since then many other moons have been observed with water icy plumes and sub-surface liquid water predicted.

My thought is, if Saturn had the same sub-surface liquid water (and why not?), and these plumes erupted at the equator then rings would inevitably be the result due to rotation.

Thickening surface ice, being more voluminous than liquid water, would create internal pressure as Saturn cooled, and carries on cooling, which would be episodically released at its weakest - maybe warmest point - resulting in periodical plume expression, and ring formation over time, the reach of which being determined by those internal pressures.

Maybe also a potential insight for"spokes" (and braiding, if there is an axial wobble)

Or not!