{"id":283426,"date":"2026-02-14T06:26:23","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T06:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/283426\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T06:26:23","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T06:26:23","slug":"the-cosmic-collision-that-formed-saturns-rings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/283426\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cosmic Collision That Formed Saturn\u2019s Rings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturn\u2019s rings have captivated astronomers since Galileo<\/a> first glimpsed them in the early 15th century. While the 13-year Cassini Saturn mission answered many questions about the iconic planetary feature, such as the ring\u2019s age, it raised new ones about the planetary system.<\/p>\n

Namely: Why are Saturn\u2019s rings so young? Why do so many of Saturn\u2019s 274 moons have lopsided orbits? And if Saturn\u2019s mass is so centrally located, why does its axis have a wobble?<\/p>\n

In 2022, astronomers from MIT and the University of California, Berkeley proposed<\/a> an elegant answer to all three questions: Saturn once had a moon that was ejected after a brush with Titan and broke up to form the rings.<\/p>\n

To test this hypothesis, researchers from the SETI Institute led by Matija \u0106uk performed a series of computer simulations to determine if this moon could come near enough to Saturn to form its rings. While not published yet, their findings have been accepted for publication<\/a> in the Planetary Science Journal.<\/p>\n

The researchers noticed that Hyperion, another of Saturn\u2019s moons, tended to disappear when the hypothetical moon in their simulations became unstable. And yet it still exists, so what gives?<\/p>\n

Read more: \u201cWhen the Earth Had Two Moons<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHyperion, the smallest among Saturn\u2019s major moons provided us the most important clue about the history of the system,\u201d said \u0106uk in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hyperion is an oblong, potato-shaped moon with a shaggy, chaotic orbit, but one that\u2019s locked to Titan. The Titan-Hyperion lock, the researchers say, happened only a few hundred million years ago\u2014around the same time the extra hypothetical moon disappeared.<\/p>\n

And so, the researchers proposed an alternative scenario to fit the facts. \u201cPerhaps Hyperion did not survive this upheaval but resulted from it,\u201d \u0106uk explained. \u201cIf the extra moon merged with Titan, it would likely produce fragments near Titan\u2019s orbit. That is exactly where Hyperion would have formed.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this scenario, a small \u201cproto-Hyperion\u201d and a large \u201cproto-Titan\u201d merged to form the moon we know as Titan while the debris became Hyperion. This would explain some odd things about Titan, like its eccentric orbit and the lack of impact craters on its surface, which would have formed in the event of a collision.<\/p>\n

But what about the rings?<\/p>\n

If Titan formed from a merger, the researchers found, its eccentric orbit could destabilize smaller moons closer to Saturn, sending them coursing on cosmic demolition derby. If so, some of the debris from the collisions would have scattered inward to form the rings.<\/p>\n

While astronomers are still parsing data from Cassini, we\u2019ll get more information about Saturn in the coming decade. Launching in 2028, NASA\u2019s Dragonfly<\/a> mission is scheduled to reach Titan in 2034, when a nuclear-powered octocopter will touch down on the moon\u2019s surface\u2014something Galileo never could have dreamed of.<\/p>\n

Enjoying\u00a0 Nautilus<\/a>? Subscribe to our free newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This story was originally featured on Nautilus<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saturn\u2019s rings have captivated astronomers since Galileo first glimpsed them in the early 15th century. While the 13-year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[158176,158178,111,139,69,2214,52481,158177,147],"class_list":["post-283426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-cassini-saturn","tag-hypothetical-moon","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-researchers","tag-saturns-rings","tag-saturns-moons","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}