A new study has found the reason why Jupiter does not have rings like the neighboring gas giant Saturn, according to RT.
Saturn’s rings are made up largely of ice, and some of them may come from comets that are also made of ice.
Jupiter has a ring system known as Jupiter’s rings or the Jupiter ring system, and it consists of small dust particles. This annular system is so faint that it wasn’t 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 more amazing rings that would match Saturn. If Jupiter had them, they would appear much brighter to us, because the planet is so much closer than Saturn.”
According to a study published last Thursday in the Planetary Science Journa and on the arXiv website, the reason for the absence of Jupiter’s rings is relatively simple, which is that its massive moons prevent them from forming.
The planet actually has 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 stargazing equipment.
The researchers ran computer simulations of each of the orbits of Jupiter and the four main moons that surround it: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, which are known in the scientific community as the Galilean moons.
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.”
In other words, Kane and his colleagues believe that the gravitational force and sheer force of Jupiter’s moons, particularly 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 Jupiter’s groove.
The rings of Jupiter are faintly visible 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.