Astronomers lift veil over Saturn’s moons Titan and Enceladus

The The Solar System Created from a large Cloud of Gas And dust, the Protozoal Nebula. This cloud Collapsed, Most of his Mass Our creates Star The “remnants” formed a disk, called Protoplanetary disk, From what Were created Exactly Planets But Dwarf planets, Asteroids, Comets… an excerpt Thing This post is over Around the circular path In orbit around the planets, it becomes the place to build satellites.

A circular disk, the cradle of Saturn’s satellites

It is believed that Titan’s construction blocks And d ‘Enselate Such a circular disk, at an advanced stage, was created around Saturn. The Composition This Monday Is determined by the location of Compression, Also known as ice lines of various turbulent compounds within this disk, i.e. the distance of these compounds – water, Carbon monoxide, Methane … – Pass from the gaseous state (near, where it is “hot”) Solid (Also, where it is cooler). To know exactly what it looks like Subject It eventually created these two satellites, so it is necessary to study a lot of evolution Money Evaporation on this disk is a function of the migration, growth and evaporation of frozen grains.

To do this, Sarah E. Anderson, Oliver Moses and Thomas Ronet simulated evolution Thermodynamics This disk and main transport Chemical species Within it: water ice, hydrateAmmonia, Clothrate Methane (or methane hydrate), carbon monoxide and pure nitrogen capacitors. Scientists later showed that construction blocks Titan And Enceladus carbon monoxide and dinitrogen (outside) accumulate between the ice and are associated with the crystallization of methane hydrate, a type of ice water cage that traps some compounds turbulent (inside).

Stable supply of new solids

The researchers also demonstrated that the perimeter-Saturnian disk has benefited by continuously supplying new solids to form moons. Without such a supply, solids would have fallen on Saturn before it had time to participate in the formation of the surrounding moons. The best location of these solids on Saturn’s disk is far from the current orbits of Titan and Enceladus: Saturn has a radius of 66 to 100 times, and Saturn has a radius of 4 to 20 times. Current orbits of Enceladus and Titan, respectively.

This distance only allows the formation and growth of solids with compounds similar to those measured on Enceladus and Titan. The species then develops in solid form in the system for a long time and even reaches equilibrium, thus promoting the formation of the building blocks of Titan and Enceladus in this region of the disk.

This result allows the team of researchers to report that the building blocks of Titan and Enceladus are more concentrated than their current orbits around Saturn. This study demonstrates the value of sending a robotic mission dedicated to measuring the chemical and isotopic composition of these moons.