On February 23, the US officially announced data compiled from the SETI Institute and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to come up with a large-scale astronomical impact scenario to decode the Saturn system.
Accordingly, the largest moon of this planet, Titan, is identified as gradually moving away from its home orbit at a speed of up to 11cm per year.
This unusual drifting orbit, combined with the axis tilt of Saturn up to 26.7 degrees, has been a thorny problem that has puzzled the global astronomy community for decades.
To find the final answer, the research team led by scientist Matija Ćuk compared the huge amount of data from the Cassini probe with supercomputer simulation models.
Analysis results show that about 500 years ago, a mysterious moon had a fierce collision and completely merged into the surface of Titan. This destructive collision not only reshaped Titan's orbit but also directly created Hyperion, the moon with the most bizarre shape in the entire Saturn satellite system.
Moreover, the mass and gravity from this "missing" moon are considered the core key to explaining the strange orbital resonance between Saturn and Neptune.
Notably, the shock from the giant merger mentioned above continued to trigger a chain collision between the moons located in the inner ring of the system. The consequence of this orbital oscillation process has torn apart a series of small celestial bodies, thereby creating a spectacular belt system surrounding Saturn about 100 million years ago.
Experts from the University of Arizona and Queen Mary's University assess that this new hypothesis is much more logical and convincing than the scenario about a "lone moon" that was announced in 2022.
In order to comprehensively verify these forensic space evidences, NASA plans to deploy the nuclear-powered super robot Dragonfly in 2028. This state-of-the-art machine will hover above the surface of Titan to directly collect and analyze samples, promising to bring decisive evidence of the historic collision that shaped Saturn today.
