The latest images and scientific data from the Cassini probe have helped scientists figure out that Saturn's rings continue to exist and have not "escaped" into space in the distant past due to the fact that they are held in place by seven moons of the giant planet, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. …
The Saturnian rings were discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610, who considered them to be three large moons. In the middle of the 17th century, Christian Huygens found out that Galileo's "satellites" are actually rings, consisting of the smallest particles of dust and ice. Scientists still argue about the nature of these rings - some planetologists believe that they arose from fragments of an ancient protoplanet, while others consider them to be the product of recent cataclysms.
Controversy is also added by the fact that recently the probe "Cassini" discovered that Saturn is gradually "sucking" water from its rings, which forced planetary scientists to look for a possible source of their replenishment. This is probably Enceladus - other observations of the Cassini have shown that the geysers of Saturn's moon are constantly replenishing ice in the E ring, one of the largest outer rings of the gas giant.
Another problem, says Radwan Tajeddine, a member of the Cassini science team and a planetary scientist at Cornell University (USA), is the fact that the matter of the rings must gradually either fall on Saturn or "escape" into outer space. Analysis of the latest images of "Cassini" shows that the rings should have disappeared for several tens or hundreds of millions of years after their birth. However, they still exist today, which has left scientists wondering why the rings did not disappear.
The reason for this, as NASA planetologists have found out, are the seven moons of Saturn that live next to the rings or right inside them - Pan, Atlas, Prometheus, Pandora, Janus, Epimetheus and Mimas.
Cassini's images and scientific data from its flyby through Saturn's rings show that these moons stabilize the planet's two outer rings, A and B, which account for the lion's share of gas and dust. The satellites of Saturn, as scientists have found, "slow down" the movement of dust particles in these rings and prevent them from penetrating into their orbits, which protects the rings from decay and allows them to retain the clear structure that they have today.
Other recent data collected by Cassini have not yet allowed scientists to uncover other mysteries of Saturn, and in some cases, they have made them even more mysterious. For example, long-term observations of the planet's magnetic field did not help astronomers find out if its magnetic axis is tilted with respect to the axis of rotation, which is necessary to calculate the exact length of the day on the "Lord of the rings".
Moreover, if such a tilt is absent in principle, then this will mean that planetologists and geologists today do not fully understand the mechanisms that are associated with the appearance of their own magnetic fields in planets, which will force scientists to completely rethink what we know about the structure of the bowels Saturn, Jupiter and other giant planets.
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