Technology

Recently scientists revealed a great mystery that surrounds Saturn and its curious rings, which have generated many doubts among experts for more than a century.

Among the different questions, The main one is to know the exact age of the rings of the sixth planet in the solar system and what might happen to them in the future.

To resolve and explain this unknown, scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder in the United States published a new study that provides the strongest evidence obtained so far.

Research published in the scientific journal of Science Advances points out that there is a great debate regarding the rings of the sixth planet of the solar system and its approximate age, since before it was not known if they had been formed before or following the birth of the star.

The investigation detailed that in reality the rings would not be more than 400 million years old, which means that they were formed before the birth of Saturn, which was born approximately 4,500 million years ago.

According to Sascha Kempf, associate professor at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) and director of the research, the key to having the answers that have been sought regarding Saturn’s rings for more than a century is due to careful study. from space dust.

“In a way, we have closed a question that began with James Clerk Maxwell (the Scottish scientist who initiated studies of the planet in the 19th century)”commented Sascha Kempf.

According to experts, the rings that surround Saturn are mostly made up of “water ice”but “They are contaminated by non-iced material with a volume fraction ranging from ~0.1 to 2%. In addition, the continuous bombardment of exogenous micrometeorites into the Saturn system is a source of this non-iced material.”

By revealing the inward mass flux of such contaminants, it allows scientists to estimate the length of time they have been exposed, providing a cut-off for their age.

Besides, the study showed that not only the weight and flow of the mass were the data that helped to limit the age of the rings, but their color also gave away how old or young they were.

“The color of the resulting ring and the variations in albedo with Saturn’s radial distance provide a key to constraining the age of the ring.”highlights the research published in the journal Science Advinces.

In the study that has been carried out for 13 years, from 2004 to 2017, The scientists made use of the tool called the Cosmic Dust Analyzer on the Casssini spacecraft of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to analyze the dust specks that flew around the sixth planet of the solar system.

In those 13 years, it was possible to collect 163 grains, however, they were not enough for astronomers, but they served to know that Saturn’s rings have been accumulating dust for hundreds of millions of years.

According to scientists, the rings are phenomena that are constantly emerging, which in cosmic terms would be equivalent to a “blink your eyes”so they might potentially disappear.

However, it is a mystery to which there is still no answer, since the age of this phenomenon is known, but it is not clearly known how it arises.

“We know roughly how old the rings are, but it doesn’t solve any of our other problems. We still don’t know how these rings formed in the first place.”Kempf noted.

James O’Donoghue, who will lead research to track the rate of destruction of Saturn’s well-known ring shower, said they are trying to find out how fast Saturn’s rings might be eroding.

“Currently, research suggests they will only be part of that planet for a few hundred million more years. This may seem like a long time, but in the history of the universe, it’s a relatively quick death. We might be very lucky to be around at a time when the rings exist.”O’Donoghue added.

At the time, he explained that although Saturn is many millions of miles away from Earth, the key to understanding how fast its rings are disappearing “It may be in some of the world’s leading atmospheric scientists at Berkshire in the UK.”

Future research to resolve the aforementioned unknown will take place at the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading in December 2023 and will be supported by the UK’s Ernest Rutherford Fellowship Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).