Jupiter’s rings are so thin that they were only seen by the Voyager spacecraft in 1979.
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA – Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System. This planet is made of gas, and is twice as massive as all the other planets in our solar system.
Perhaps not many people know that Jupiter has thin rings that resemble chopsticks. The rings of Jupiter are different from the majestic rings of the planet Saturn. Jupiter’s rings are made of tiny dust particles. Whereas Saturn’s rings, which contain large pieces of ice and rock.
Jupiter’s disk is so fragile that scientists didn’t even notice it until 1979, when the Voyager 1 spacecraft and some strategically located sunlight finally made it visible.
Now, scientists may have found the answer as to why Jupiter has such a disk. Their findings are available on arXiv and will be published soon Journal of Planetary Science.
Jupiter has 79 different moons. One of Jupiter’s moons is a major target for the search for life beyond Earth. This moon orbiting Jupiter may be the reason why Jupiter does not have a ring as large as Saturn.
“We found that Jupiter’s Galilean moon, one of the largest moons in our solar system, would annihilate any large rings very quickly,” said Stephen Kane, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Riverside, who led the research. led. , Saturday (23/7/2022).
As a result, he said, Jupiter is unlikely to have a large ring. Kane and his colleagues believe that any material that tries to form a Saturn-like ring around the gas giant may be affected by the gravity of the moons orbiting Jupiter, especially the four largest Galilean moons. Will be crushed by the stretch.
“Big planets make big moons, which prevents them from forming enough rings,” Kane said.
