Saturn's moons and
rings could be younger than the dinosaurs, study reveals
100 million years, cosmically speaking, is
super young.
When researchers talk about planets and moons
forming, it’s usually an event that took place billions and billions of years
ago - a timeframe that's so massive, it's hard for us to really comprehend. But
that can no longer be said about Saturn’s famous moons and rings, because they
might have formed a mere 100 million years ago, which makes them younger than
most dinosaurs.
According to researchers from the Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI),
a new computer model shows evidence that Saturn’s inner moons and rings are
actually a relatively modern creation, especially considering that Saturn
itself, along with the other planets in our Solar System, formed some 4.5
billion years ago.
The discovery came from analysing orbital data
from the planet’s moons. Basically, since Saturn has so many moons flying around it, they have to
share space, which means that the orbits of these moons are affected by each
other. As time goes on, these orbits stretch out and grow.
So, based on that logic, the younger moons
should have different, more ordinary orbits than the older moons, if they
actually had billions of years to get weird. As SETI puts it:
"By comparing present orbital tilts and those predicted by
computer simulations, the researchers could learn how much the orbits of
Saturn’s moons grew. It turns out that for some of the most important
satellites - Tethys, Dione, and Rhea - the orbits are less dramatically altered
than previously thought."
With that observation, the researchers used
data from NASA’s Cassini mission data to create simulations.
When all was said and done, the team found
that many of Saturn’s moons - except the faraway ones like Titan - likely formed
100 million years ago, meaning that many of Saturn’s moons formed during
Earth’s Cretaceous Period, the era during which many of your favourite
dinosaurs were alive.
It's hoped that the findings will help us
judge the ages of other moons inside our Solar System and out.
It’s pretty crazy to think that moons were
forming in our Solar System during a time on Earth that many of us can actually
envision. It’s still a super-long time ago, but, cosmically speaking, it's like
it only happened yesterday.
You can read the full research article in the Astrophysical Journal.