NASA has discovered strange behavior of Saturn’s rings

A new discovery from the US Space Agency (a pot) came to the conclusion that Saturn’s rings heat the outermost layer of the planet’s atmosphere. This is an unprecedented phenomenon in the solar system and was revealed after collecting 40 years of ultraviolet observations made by various missions such as CassiniAnd the passenger 1 and 2 and the space telescope Hubble.

The result was announced through a NASA press release and a science article published in Planetary Science Journal in the last days. There, he details how by combining and correlating the data, a research team led by an astronomer from the Paris Institute of Astrophysics and the University of Arizona, Lutfi bin JafelAn unexpected discovery was made about the heating of part of Saturn’s atmosphere due to its rings.

Although it was initially specified that the revelations would help find alien worlds equipped with the ring system The most telling sign of this unprecedented phenomenon is an excess of visible ultraviolet light as a streak of hot hydrogen in the spectrum of Saturn’s atmosphere.High radiation means something is polluted and the upper part of the atmosphere is being heated from the outside.

The most plausible explanation is that The reason for the warming is the fall of frozen particles from Saturn’s rings, caused by the impact of micrometeorites, bombardment of particles from the solar wind, solar ultraviolet radiation, or electromagnetic forces picking up electrically charged dust. All this happens under the influence of Saturn’s gravitational field, which attracts particles to the planet.

Although the slow dissociation of rings is well known, Its effect on the planet’s atomic hydrogen is surprising. Since the Cassini probe, we already know the effect of the rings. “However, we knew nothing about the atomic hydrogen content,” Lutfi Ben Jafel said in a report to the British newspaper The Guardian. a pot.

An increase in ultraviolet radiation was also detected by various missions, but only thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope was it possible to calibrate all the observations and understand that the recorded anomalies were not artifacts.

“Everything is powered by ring particles that infiltrate the atmosphere at specific latitudes. They modify the upper atmosphere, changing the composition,” he noted, adding, “Then there are also collisions with atmospheric gases that are likely to heat the atmosphere over certain height.”

Nation