Collisionless Saturnian rings

Details Collisionless Saturnian rings Collisionless Saturnian rings

Oct 1981

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1981p%26ss...29.1137m&link_type=abstract

Planetary and Space Science, vol. 29, Oct. 1981, p. 1137-1142

Physics

7

Particle Collisions, Particle Motion, Planetology, Saturn Rings, Gravitational Effects, Saturn (Planet), Space Exploration, Saturn, Rings, Collisions, Particles, Oscillations, Motion, Thickness, Perturbations, Gravity Effects, Diagrams, Hypotheses, Toruses, Models, Theoreical Studies, Braided Rings, Observations, Disk, Optical Properties

Scientific paper

It is shown that particles orbiting a central body (i.e. Saturn's rings) can be assembled into one or more dense (i.e. opaque) independent rings without interparticle collisions taking place despite the inevitable particle oscillations about the ring plane. The resultant apparent bulk motion is a slow rolling motion of the ring as it orbits, the individual rings describing a helical motion. Such rings would only evolve due to external perturbations or (slow) internal gravitational perturbations, since the particles need never collide. This picture opens up the possibility of having hollow rings, for example. Moreover, it is possible that an initially uniform disk of randomly moving particles may spontaneously separate into a series of such rings. The consequences would be a striated disk having virtually zero internal viscosity.

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