Saturn’s largest moon may actually be 2 moons in 1 — and helped birth the planet’s iconic rings
Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, could be made up of two different moons that broke apart hundreds of millions of years ago, a new study suggests. If confirmed, this epic collision could also help solve several long-standing mysteries surrounding the gas giant, including how it iconic rings shape.
Titan is the second largest moon in the solar system, behind Jupiter’s Ganymede. It’s around 3,200 miles (5,150 kilometers) in diameterwhich is about 1.5 times wider than Earth’s Moon and about 5% wider than Mercury.
Until now, researchers believed that, like most other moons, Titan was formed billions of years ago through the gradual accumulation of tiny pieces of rock and dust. But in the new study, uploaded on February 9 to the preprint server arXiv and accepted for future publication in The Planetary Science Journal, researchers at the SETI Institute have shown that this may not be the case.
Based on data collected by NASA’s Cassini probe, which flew by Titan and deployed Huygens on its surface, the SETI team proposes that Titan may have formed about 400 million years ago when two moons of the same mass collided.
This collision could also have given rise to another Saturnian moon, Hyperion, the researchers say. This small satellite, approximately 135 km wide, was probably formed from collision debris, largely like Earth’s moon did when the protoplanet Theia crashed into Earth about 4.5 billion years ago.
Additionally, the new hypothesis could explain the unusual orbits of several other Saturnian satellites, the team said.
Saturn’s missing moon
Saturn has at least 274 moons – the most of any planet — after recent discovery of 128 natural satellites. However, researchers have long suspected that another massive moon is missing.
Saturn’s orbit around the sun is strongly inclined relative to the rest of the planets (except for its wobbly neighbor, Uranus), which not only allows us to see the planet’s extraordinary rings but also hints that something huge has moved it. This mysterious object was most likely a large moon, which researchers have long suspected was gravitationally thrown away from Saturn.
In the new study, researchers explored the possibility that this moon did not disappear but was destroyed.
The “biggest clue” that this other moon was destroyed is Hyperion, which is locked in an orbital resonance with Titan, circling Saturn three times for every four orbits of Titan.
“We recognized that the Titan-Hyperion Lock is relatively young, only a few hundred million years old,” lead study author and SETI researcher. Matija Ćuk said in a statement. “This is from around the same time that the extra moon disappeared. [So] perhaps Hyperion did not survive this upheaval but was a result of it.”
After simulating several scenarios using Cassini data, the team now believes that two massive moons, dubbed “Proto-Titan” and “Proto-Hyperion”, crashed into each other, giving rise to Titan and ultimately creating Hyperion from the remains of the massive collision.
Rings, orbits and automobiles
Hyperion may not have been the only moon created or affected by this potential crash.
Researchers suggest that the impact could have given rise to several other moons that slowly drifted toward Saturn and collided with other existing satellites, creating a debris field that eventually settled into Saturn’s rings about 100 million years ago. (This hypothesis contradicts a recent study suggesting that Saturn’s rings are much older than previously thought.)
The study team also hypothesizes that the collision could explain the wobbly orbits of two other Saturnian moons, Iapetus and Rhea, which are significantly tilted relative to their surrounding satellites and resonate somewhat with Titan’s orbit.
Furthermore, their hypothesis could explain the Titan phenomenon. surprising absence of impact craters: Because he is much younger than previously thought, he has been exposed to fewer meteor impacts. The team proposes that before its creation, Proto-Titan may have been covered in markings, similar to Callisto, Jupiter’s moon.
NASA is preparing to send its Dragonfly probe to visit and explore Titan. The drone-like spacecraft is scheduled to launch in 2028, which would allow it to reach the Moon by 2034. When it arrives, it could potentially confirm the collision hypothesis and further unravel the Moon’s remaining mysteries.
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