Worked on the orbit of Saturn almost 20 years NASA space probe “Cassini” even in the last moments of his life did not cease to transmit to Earth the amazing facts about the gas giant. After analyzing another portion of the information collected, the scientists found that the inner rings of the planet, those that are located closest to the atmosphere of the planet, in a short (by cosmic standards) of the time can completely disappear. Matter rings actively “devoured” by the atmosphere of the planet. This was reported in an article published in the journal Science.
Submerging the apparatus in the last stage of his work in the atmosphere of Saturn, scientists were hoping to find out the nature of the magnetic field of the gas giant, and a feature of its interaction with accumulations of gas and dust that make up the rings of the planet. Their last minute “Cassini” held within in a particular area saturnine atmosphere where there is an exotic “rain” of droplets of water and dust particles gradually falling to the Saturn of the nearest rings.
“It turned out that the rings of Saturn not just a “drizzle” falling into the planet’s atmosphere and generate a real downpour. Ice, water drops and dust move so fast that every second of Saturn “devours” about 10-45 tons of matter rings,” commented the astronomer, hunter white of the southwest research Institute in boulder (USA).
The existence of this rain, scientists suspected back in the 80-ies. Data were obtained by the spacecraft Voyager flew past the gas giant, however, until the very end of the mission, Cassini scientists were not sure that this constant stream of dust and water generated by rings and not by some internal processes in the bowels of the planet.
Dive apparatus into the atmosphere have proved their nature, and also allowed to find out what they are. It turned out that the composition of the ring is very reminiscent of the matter of comets. Scientists have found that they contain a large amount of organic matter, oxygen and ammonia entering the complex reactions during the fall into the atmosphere. In addition, it was found that the volume of these particles greatly exceeds the volume that was predicted by the cosmological models describing their device.
Based on these data, scientists have concluded that the next to the planet rings (D and C) should soon disappear. If we talk about the D ring, something he calculations there are only 7-60 thousands of years. Ring can completely disappear, if the matter is ring C, it will not feed. The C ring time remains a few more, but by cosmic standards, it will also disappear very quickly – within 700 thousand or 7 million years, depending on the chosen scenario.
These findings suggests that the presence of the rings of the planet can be fickle.
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Saturn devouring his own ring. Coming to the planet will soon disappear
Nikolai Khizhnyak