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NASA: Mysterious ‘spokes’ in Saturn’s rings are still alive
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According to NASA, the mysterious “spokes” in Saturn’s rings are still alive.
The spokes, visible near the center of the photo, appear luminous against the dense core of the B ring, which is the darkest section of the rings depicted here in silhouette. The photo was obtained in visible light with the space agency’s Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Oct. 19, 2013.
As Saturn nears its northern summer solstice, conditions advantageous to the generation of spokes are anticipated to lessen. Researchers plan to watch the transition in order to learn more about the mechanisms that develop these enigmatic features.
Determining the timing of the appearance of the spokes has long been of interest to researchers.
“Cassini has found that the Saturn Kilometric Radiation period has changed since Voyager, which though hard to believe, may mean that the rotation of Saturn’s interior has changed,” posited Dr. Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute, in a 2005 statement. “That would be a finding of enormous consequence, so we’ll be looking very closely to see if the frequency of spoke activity has changed too.”
NASA says there is no generally accepted theory for the generation of the spokes. Some scientists have suggested that spokes come from meteoroid impacts onto Saturn’s rings, while others contend that they are produced by instability in the planet’s magnetic field.
This particular view of the spokes was obtained at a distance of about 1.2 million miles from Saturn.
Source: http://www.ascensionearth2012.org/2014/05/nasa-mysterious-spokes-in-saturns-rings.html
