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Study Proposes Titan Formed From Two-Moon Merger, Tying Event to Saturn’s Young Rings

Computer simulations accepted for publication link a Titan moon merger to recent ring formation, offering predictions Dragonfly can test.

Image
This mosaic of Saturn and its largest moon Titan combines six images -- two each of red, green and blue spectral filters -- to create this natural color view. The images were obtained with Cassini’s wide-angle camera on May 6, 2012, at a distance of approximately 778,000 km (483,000 miles) from Titan. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

Overview

  • Researchers led by the SETI Institute modeled an unstable extra moon most often colliding with Titan, producing a merged Titan and debris near Titan’s orbit.
  • The scenario reproduces the relatively young Titan–Hyperion orbital lock and suggests Hyperion accreted from fragments generated by the merger.
  • Post-merger resonances from an eccentric Titan could have destabilized inner moons, triggering collisions that yielded rings consistent with an age near 100 million years.
  • Cassini’s measurements of Saturn’s internal mass distribution and a precession-rate mismatch motivated the extra-moon hypothesis explored by the team.
  • The paper is in press at the Planetary Science Journal with a preprint on arXiv, and NASA’s Dragonfly mission arriving in 2034 could probe Titan’s surface for corroborating evidence.