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Solar system

Recipe for making Saturn's rings

Nature volume 468, pages 903–905 (2010)Cite this article

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Simulations show that the still-mysterious origin of Saturn's vast, icy rings could be explained by the 'peeling' by Saturn's tides of the icy mantle of a large satellite migrating towards the planet. See Letter p.943

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Figure 1: Canup's model for the formation of Saturn's icy rings7.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Aurélien Crida is at the Laboratoire Cassiopée, Université de Nice Sophia-antipolis/CNRS/Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur — BP4229, 06304 Nice Cedex 4, France. aurelien.crida@oca.eu ,

    Aurélien Crida

  2. Sébastien Charnoz is at the Laboratoire AIM, Université Paris Diderot/CEA IRFU/CNRS CEA Saclay — SAp Centre de l'Orme Les Merisiers, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France.,

    Sébastien Charnoz

Authors
  1. Aurélien Crida
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  2. Sébastien Charnoz
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Additional information

This article and the paper under discussion7 were published online on 12 December 2010.

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Crida, A., Charnoz, S. Recipe for making Saturn's rings. Nature 468, 903–905 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09738

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