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Neptune's misbehaving rings

Nature volume 400, pages 709–710 (1999)Cite this article

Without confinement, the arcs of material orbiting Neptune would have spread out into rings long ago. But new observations show they are still there, challenging astronomers' best attempts at explaining them.

Consider this thought experiment. You are orbiting a planet and you open up a big bag of marbles. What happens? Well, at first the marbles stay together, because they and you are following roughly the same orbital path. But soon, jostling among the marbles will occur as they bounce off one another. Eventually they will spread apart, with each marble following a slightly different path. Some marbles will follow slightly lower orbits that circle the planet faster, whereas others will follow higher orbits that circle the planet more slowly. Eventually, the faster-moving marbles will lap the slower-moving ones, and you will find yourself within a continuous, uniform ring encircling the entire planet.

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Figure 1: This classic Voyager image shows two of Neptune's faint rings.

NASA

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Space Telecommunications and Radioscience Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, 94305, California, USA

    Mark R. Showalter

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  1. Mark R. Showalter
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Showalter, M. Neptune's misbehaving rings. Nature 400, 709–710 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/23349

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