How Does Saturn Work?

that's millions of miles away from Saturn itself. For comparison, the average distance between Earth and our Moon is a paltry two thirty nine thousand miles or four thousand kilometers. Once again, astronomy puts the human ego in check. Saturn's rings get all the attention, but we shouldn't ignore its other attributes. The sixth planet in our solar system, it's also the biggest after Jupiter. Those two are in a

league of their own. If you mushed every planet from Mercury to Neptune together, Saturn and Jupiter would account for over night in d percent of the cumulative mass of that planetary mass. But despite its immense size, Saturn is the least dense planet in the Sun's orbit, and the least spherical too. We'll need to look at its physical makeup to understand why. Research published in twenty nineteen showed that a day on Saturn lasts just ten hours, thirty

three minutes and thirty eight seconds. It's spin rate helps explain one of the ringed world's stranger qualities. You see, Saturn is ten percent wider than it is tall, a difference of over seven thousand miles or nearly twelve thousand kilometers. Astronomers call that kind of disparity and equatorial bulge. Every planet in the Solar System has one, but Saturn's is the most extreme. Saturn rotates around its axis at a very high speed, hence the brevity of its days. And

here's where density comes into play. Like Jupiter, Saturn is a gas giant. Such worlds predominantly consist of hydrogen and helium, and whereas Earth is solid on the outside, gas giants are not. They may, however, have hard inner cores. Now,

Saturn is downright huge in terms of volume. Some seven hundred and sixty four Earth sized objects could fit inside of it, and the planet is ninety five times as massive as our home world, and yet relative to its size, Earth is eight times more dense in fact water, Yes, plain water is denser than Saturn, although that doesn't mean

the planet would float. It's not cohesive enough, so thanks to its low, low density and zippy rotational speed, Saturn has been deformed into an oblong world that looks kind of squished in profile. Jupiter's southern hemisphere famously has an ongoing storm called the Great Red Spot. Saturn's answer to this is the Great White Spots, which are periodic tempests that arise every thirty earth years. First detected in eighteen seventy six, these weather events are colossal in scale. NASA's

Cassini spacecraft spent thirteen productive years hovering around Saturn. On December, it witnessed the most recent iteration of the Great White Spot phenomenon. The storm was about eight hundred miles by six hundred miles long when it first began that's about kilometers, But over the next six months, the spot expanded longitudinally until it had looped itself around the planet in a

gigantic circle. Some researchers think the Great White Spots might be part of a cycle that sees the outer layer of Saturn's atmosphere slowly lose heat, allowing the warm air from lower levels to burst upward. Meanwhile, up at Saturn's north pole, there's a cloud pattern shaped like a giant hexagon.

This pleasantly symmetrical jet stream spins counterclockwise, measures about twenty thousand miles or thirty kilometers across, and includes a hurricane that's been swirling right over the pole ever since it was discovered. Back. Of course, it's not the hexagon that earns Saturn a place on Chucky Finster's T shirt you know from Rugrats. Anyway, the gas giant is most famous

for the spectacular ring system encircling it. Planetary rings aren't rare per se a Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune have them as well, yet in terms of sheer scale, the network around Saturn is totally unrivaled. Most of the primary rings come with letter names of The closest one to Saturn is called the D ring, which has an inner radius of about forty two miles or sixty seven kilometers, so a lot closer than our moon. It's surrounded by the C, B, A, F, G,

and E rings in that order. By the way, the rings aren't arranged alphabetically because the naming system reflects the dates of their discovery. A, B, and C were sited before the rest. When measured from its outside edge, the E ring showcases an impressive three hundred thousand mile radius or four d and eighty thousand kilometers, or at least that looks impressive until you get to know the big

bad Phoebe ring that we mentioned earlier. First spotted in two thousand nine, this one was named after one of Saturn's moons. Untold trillions of ice, rock, and dust particles make up these rings. Some bits are the size of a sugar grain, others could probably dwarf your house. In

any case, the ring material is stretched remarkably thin. Saturn's rings may be as thick as two miles or three kilometers wide, down to just thirty two ft or ten ms wide, so proportionately, the gas giants iconic rings are thinner than a typical sheet of writing paper, as noted by astronomer phil Plate. Whereas Saturn itself is probably around four point five billion years old, the age of its

rings isn't as clear. Some scientists think that they were formed ten million to a hundred million years ago when an icy comet or some ice covered moons came too close to the planet, the visitor or visitors would have met a grizzly end, getting ripped to pieces by Saturn's gravity. As those fragments collided, they grew smaller and multiplied, giving rise to the skinny but brilliant system we all know today.

On the other hand, a twenty nineteen paper argued that the rings might have originated at an earlier stage in the history of our Solar System. We'll have to see how the debate unfolds as new evidence arises. There's lots about this planet that we're still learning. In October of twenty nineteen, the International Astronomical Union heralded the discovery of twenty newfound moons orbiting the gas giant. With these bodies added to the mix, there are now eighty two verified

Saturn moons altogether. No other planet in the Solar System has that many natural satellites, not even Mighty Jupiter. You can find Saturn's moons in around and beyond the Ring system. Before Cassini was retired in ten it revealed that some of them gather clumps of ice and dust from the rings. Saturn's moon Titan is especially well named. It's our solar systems second biggest moon overall, and it's dotted with seas,

lakes and rivers of liquid methane and ethane. There's only one other body within the Sun's orbit that has standing pools of liquid that we know about, and here's a hint. You're sitting on it right now. Titan is also noteworthy for having an atmosphere, and it's theorized that there could be ice volcanoes that spew water instead of lava like Earth.

Saturn gets auroras at its poles. They're invisible to the unaided human eye, but the Cassini spacecraft and the Hubble space telescope have captured footage of them using infrared and ultra violet imaging. Today's episode was written by Mark Bancini and produced by Tyler Clay. For more on this and lots of other topics, is it how stuffworks dot com.

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