TruthfulTravesty Posted July 28, 2015 Share Posted July 28, 2015 So, after finish a mission on Saturn I got shipped back to my Liset to find the beautiful ringed planet through the viewing port. I stared for awhile until it hit me... Why do Saturn's rings only appear on a single plane? Why do they all form a disk instead of some weird dust donut toroid? And finally, why aren't there more of them at different elevations along the same axis? Then I realized that I had asked this question a long time ago... too long ago. Too long for it to be unanswered! But I wasn't about to do some easy fishing over Google for a question that had this much legacy. No sir! I theorized over the toilet that perhaps it was because of the planet's rotation that centrifugal forces pulled all the dust to the area where the forces were strongest. This would consequentially be at the place where the planet had its greatest ANGULAR MOMENTUM, the place where its cross sectional area would be the highest around the AXIS OF ROTATION. After a good five minutes of agreeable grunting to myself, I decided to consult the interwebs. I typed in my quandary to find that someone over on a science Reddit had asked the same question, and the answer they got had to do with similar concepts involving the conservation of angular momentum. Only, their justification had to do with a disc being the lowest energy state for gas to settle while maintaining its orbital path. To the disgrace of SCIENCE, I succumbed to "close enough" syndrome and decided to share my epiphany to the world over an isolated section of a video game forum. With the only real relation to said video game being the inspiration it gave me to ask a question... a question that I might have already answered and forgot... maybe there are more? The knowledge I have gained so far in life is transient... and I am doomed to a recursive loop of intellectual pragmatism. What was perhaps once gained I might now believe lost... what is the knowledge I have? How can levels of knowledge be compared when the concept of its "quantity" is ever changing with the bearer's perception. How much do I know? How little do I know? What do I know? WHAT MATTER OF LOVECRAFTIAN CRISIS IS THIS!!!?!? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WingedCrusade Posted July 28, 2015 Share Posted July 28, 2015 (edited) Kids, this is what science looks like, and why you pay attention in school! ^^^ Anyhow, that's what I've always assumed anyhow, something relative to the motions, not to mention, have you considered magnetic fields at all? Considering the shape, it seems like something that'd play into it, as well. (Fun fact, all four Jovian planets have rings of dust! Saturn's is just much more visible than the others~!) Also, Cthulu. That's what Lovecraftian crisis. Cthulu. Edited July 28, 2015 by WingedCrusade Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arcane_Intelligence Posted July 28, 2015 Share Posted July 28, 2015 (edited) You might as well ask yourself why Solar System´s planets rotate around Sun in pretty much same angle. Edited July 28, 2015 by Arcane_Intelligence Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nira Posted July 28, 2015 Share Posted July 28, 2015 I was recently reading a Neil deGrasse Tyson book that posed a similar question, and yielded similar answers, if memory serves. As beautiful as the rings are, they are also of a somewhat transient nature. They'll dissipate entirely before too much longer :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
(PSN)Asoresoj Posted July 28, 2015 Share Posted July 28, 2015 Turn off the pc. Take a glass of Hot Milk with cocoa and sleep until tomorrow. You get better after that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morec0 Posted July 28, 2015 Share Posted July 28, 2015 I figured it had something to do with the equator of the planet, like gravity was stronger around the misection or something. Would also explain why the asteroid belt is a belt and not, like, a net of space rocks around the core planets - that's just the nature of spherical space objects. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stingray97 Posted July 29, 2015 Share Posted July 29, 2015 (edited) Its actually to do with the fact that objects around the planet will frequently collide. Over time this will cause all of the objects to fall into similar energy states and so fall into similar orbits, thus creating a ring. There is still more objects outside the ring but they are very sparse and do not form any sort of structure by themselves, because there is just too few of them. This is also why all of the inner planets exist on a similar plane, because when the planets were forming a massive disc of dust formed in the same way, in which the planets and all other bodies in the solar system formed. By extension this effect is also why most galaxies are disc shaped. Edited July 29, 2015 by Stingray97 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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