CountryA new study has found the reason why Jupiter does not have rings like the neighboring gas giant Saturn, where Saturn’s rings are largely made of ice, and some of them may come from comets also composed of ice.
Jupiter has a ring system known as Jupiter’s rings or the Jupiter ring system, and it consists of small dust particles, and this ring system is so faint that it was not noticed until 1979, thanks to NASA’s “Voyager 1” spacecraft.
University of California astrophysicist Stephen Kane said: “I’ve long been intrigued as to why Jupiter doesn’t have the most amazing rings that would match Saturn, and if Jupiter had them, they would appear brighter to us, because the planet is so much closer than Saturn.”
According to a recently published study, the reason for the absence of Jupiter’s rings is relatively simple, which is that its massive moons prevent them from forming.
Professor Kane said: “We found that Jupiter’s moons, one of the largest in our solar system, would quickly destroy any large rings that might form. As a result, Jupiter is unlikely to have had large rings at any time in the past.” This means that the force of gravity and the force The massive moons orbiting Jupiter, especially the four largest Galilean moons, would have wiped out any and all matter trying to produce Saturn-like rings around the gas giant.
“Massive planets form huge moons, which prevents them from forming large rings,” Kane explained. It is possible that this may also explain why Neptune’s rings are so light – although, from Earth’s point of view, the orb’s rings are still slightly larger than those of Jupiter.
The planet actually contains smaller rings – such as those of Neptune and Uranus – but they are not as large as those of Saturn, and therefore difficult to see with conventional star-gazing equipment. Jupiter’s rings appear faint in recent images from the James Webb Space Telescope.
Professor Kane, who plans to simulate the conditions of Uranus for the same purpose, said: “We didn’t know these ephemeral rings were there until the Voyager spacecraft passed by because we couldn’t see them.”
Some astronomers believe that Uranus is deflected from the side as a result of its collision with another celestial body, and its rings may be the result of the remnants of this collision.
Source: RT