Accretion of Saturn's mid-sized moons during the viscous spreading of young massive rings: Solving the paradox of silicate-poor rings versus silicate-rich moons
By S. Charnoz, A. Crida, J. Castillo‐Rogez, V. Lainey, L. Dones, O. Karatekin, Gabriel Tobie, S. Mathis, C. L. Poncin-Lafitte, J. Salmon. 2011
151 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Abstract The origin of Saturn’s inner mid-sized moons (Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione and Rhea) and Saturn’s rings is debated. Charnoz et al. [Charnoz, S., Salmon J., Crida A., 2010. Nature 465, 752–754] introduced the idea that the smallest inner moons could form from the spreading of the rings’ edge while Salmon et al. [Salmon, J., Charnoz, S., Crida, A., Brahic, A., 2010. Icarus 209, 771–785] showed that the rings could have been initially massive, and so was the ring’s progenitor itself. One may wonder if the mid-sized moons may have formed also from the debris of a massive ring progenitor, as also suggested by Canup [Canup, R., 2010. Nature 468, 943–946]. However, the process driving mid-sized moon accretion from the icy debris disks has not been investigated in details. In particular, Canup’s (2010) model does not seem able to explain the varying silicate contents of the mid-sized moons (from 6% to 57% in mass). Here, we explore the formation of large objects from a massive ice-rich ring (a few times Rhea’s mass) and describe the fundamental properties and implications of this new process. Using a hybrid computer model, we show that accretion within massive icy rings can form all mid-sized moons from Mimas to Rhea. However in order to explain their current locations, intense dissipation within Saturn (with Q p
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atmospheric Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d3dea42fcb6a8e9bffbccf75d79a531aa5394cde
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Citations in the corpus
- Tidal Dissipation in Stars and Giant Planets (2014, methodology): “Charnoz et al. (2011) extended this idea to Mimas–Rhea, requiring a small value of Q′S as suggested by Lainey et al. (2012).”
- Resonance locking as the source of rapid tidal migration in the Jupiter and Saturn moon systems (2016, methodology): “Although this scenario has been proposed (Charnoz et al. 2011; Crida & Charnoz 2012), we find the resonance locking solution described below to be simpler.”
- Enceladus: An Active Ice World in the Saturn System (2013, background): “A smaller Saturn Q is also difficult to reconcile with the current locations of the satellites unless the mid-sized satellites are significantly younger than the solar system (cf. Charnoz et al. 2011).”