Other
Scientific paper
Sep 1996
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1996dps....28.2020f&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #28, #20.20; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 28, p.1133
Other
Scientific paper
The Voyager probes have revealed two anomalous features of the Saturnian satellite system. One concerns the atmosphere of Titan, originally discovered by Kuiper, which has been found to be dense, optically thick and formed mainly by molecular nitrogen. The very existence of an atmosphere on Titan contrasts with the absence of similar atmospheres on Ganymede and Callisto, two Jovian moons with masses and sizes close to Titan's. The other anomaly is the strongly irregular shape of Hyperion, a Saturnian moon ~ 270 km in mean diameter which orbits just outside Titan, and is probably the biggest irregular body in the whole Solar System. Hyperion's properties have been widely interpreted as evidence that the current satellite is just the remnant of the fragmentation of a larger, regularly shaped precursor moon. We have shown by a detailed numerical simulation that the fragments ejected from the breakup of the Hyperion precursor must have caused an intense shower of cratering impacts onto Titan. Most impact occurred within a short interval of time (<10(3) yr), and their relatively low speeds (<4 km/s) resulted into accretion of the constituent volatile materials into Titan's atmosphere rather than atmospheric erosion. The current total amount of nitrogen in the atmosphere could have been supplied by the proto--Hyperion's fragments only provided the diameter of the disrupted satellite were as big as ~ 1000 km. But even if this was not the case, a pre--existing atmosphere might have been chemically reprocessed, producing large amounts of N_2 by shock effects. Also, impacts by proto--Hyperion fragments must have formed giant impact basins on Titan's surface.
Farinella Paolo
Marzari Francesco
Matteoli S.
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