Scientists have explained the structure of Saturn’s rings – Lenta.ru

The international team of scientists, which is composed of four Russians, explained what kind of laws are moving the rings of Saturn and other celestial bodies. Researchers have shown that the distribution of particles in the composition of these structures has a universal character. About his discovery they told the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Overview of a study reported in the press release of MSU, Received “Heathcliff!».

The rings of Saturn are composed mostly of ice crumbs, with small patches of minerals and extend for hundreds of thousands of kilometers. The thickness of the rings – only 10-100 meters. All this mass of ice rushing around the planet with enormous speed (72,000 kilometers per hour). This so-called orbital velocity with which the particles move as a unit. The velocities of the individual particles differ by several meters from it. When objects fly up to one another, they are connected and can not fly away again because of surface forces – just as two snow stick. This process happens all the time.

06:58 24 June 2015

However, there is the opposite process – the destruction of particles in collisions. The fact that a very small fraction of the particles deviation from the average speed is significant. If such a “fast” particle smashes into his “neighbor”, both crumble into small pieces. This happens very rarely, but, ultimately, set the balance between integration and disintegration of the particles.

Scientists have constructed a mathematical model of the processes that were studied by various methods, including through a huge number of solutions of differential equations. This was done on one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe – “Chebyshev” from the Moscow State University. This part of the work was carried out Moscow colleagues research group. Scientists have explained how the absence of particles in Saturn’s rings more than a certain size, and a mysterious law of “inverse cube” (particle size of two meters eight times smaller than the size of one meter, three meters in size – less than 27 times, and so on).

Moreover, because of the resulting model followed and concluded that these laws should apply to all rings, whether it is a ring of the planet or asteroid. According to scientists, this universality is only an educated guess as well. In order to confirm or refute it, more research is required.

This work allows to make a number of other scientific findings, such as the mechanism of formation of the rings and their evolution. In particular, the rings of Saturn are in a steady state for millions of years.