Because it is larger, the planet Jupiter should have larger, more spectacular rings than Saturn. But that is clearly not the case. New research by scientists at the University of California at Riverside (USA) suggests that Jupiter’s large moons are the culprits.
To understand why Jupiter looks so “bare” at the moment, a team led by astrophysicist Stephen Kane performed a dynamic computer simulation that took into account the orbits of Jupiter’s four largest moons and the orbits of the planet itself.
Spectacular ring systems, such as Saturn’s, are composed largely of ice, which may in part come from comets, which are also largely composed of ice. But if there are large, massive moons orbiting such a planet, their gravitational influence can cause the ice around the planet to be flung out, or change the orbits of the chunks of ice so that they crash onto the moons.
The simulations by Kane and his colleagues show that the disruptive influence of the four large Jupiter moons is so great that any large rings that have formed are quickly destroyed. It therefore seems unlikely that Jupiter ever had a massive ring system. It is true that the planet, like Saturn, Neptune and Uranus, does have rings, but they are so thin that they are hardly noticeable. It probably simply means that mass-rich planets also form mass-rich moons, and therefore cannot sustain a large ring system. (EE)
Why Jupiter doesn’t have rings like Saturn –
