Saturn is often considered one of the most beautiful planets in existence
perhaps it has something to do with its subtle amber hues engulfing its surface
or perhaps it's those massive cloud rings that give it a sophisticated
and elegant touch that makes it stand out from the other planets in our solar system
it's hard to deny that Saturn is not only aesthetically pleasing but truly a majestic
planet what if i told you there was a planet out there that could outclass our beautiful Saturn
welcome to Factnomenal today we will explore the new lord of the rings planet j1407b
our own ringmaster before we move forward and see how the super Saturn fares in our galaxy
we should take a deeper look at our own ringmaster and see what makes its ring so special the history
of Saturn is rather unique and since it's a planet that can be seen with the naked eye it's virtually
impossible to know who discovered it as it has been in our skies since the dawn of men
it wasn't until the 15th century when Galileo was able to observe the skies with his groundbreaking
invention the telescope and we were finally able to observe Saturn in greater detail
Galileo himself was perplexed when he first took a look at Saturn he wasn't sure what to
make of it looking through his telescope in 1610 it appeared to him as a regular planet
with two massive moons orbiting it six years later in 1616 Galileo made a more precise
telescope and was able to observe some sort of arms or handles around it making him even
more confused than before it was a few decades later when Italian astronomer and mathematician
Giovanni Cassini suggested that perhaps the handles Galileo observed were some sort of
rings that orbited the planet the mystery of what these rings were composed of lasted for centuries
some believe these rings were a type of flat moons that surrounded the planet
others thought they were an exotic type of gas yet unknown to humans it wasn't until the 1995
mission pioneer 11 that we were able to capture the first detailed pictures of Saturn's rings
we learned that what seemed to be solid rings turned out to be millions of smaller
ringlets we learned that the outermost layer of these ringlets was 170 thousand miles across
or 273 600 kilometers surprisingly the rings are not as thick as we had speculated in the past
the majority of the ringlets fall somewhere between 10 meters or 33 feet
and one kilometer or six tenths of a mile thick the combined mass of these particles in these
ringlets which is composed of 99.8 percent ice is about 16 quadrillion tons which is less than
0.02 percent of the mass of earth's moon and less than half the mass of one of Saturn's moons Mimus
thanks to these new observations we have a better idea of how these rings possibly came to be
when a moon and a planet interact with one another their gravitational forces pull them apart or push
them together on earth when our moon pulls on the opposite side of earth it causes the ocean tides
these tidal forces also affect planetary moons if a moon comes too close to a planet these forces
can overcome the gravitational glue holding the moon together and slowly over time tear it apart
which eventually causes the moon to break up and spread along its original orbit forming one of
these rings the minimum safe distance for a moon's orbit is approximately 2.5 times the planet's
radius from the planet's center for saturn this is a distance of 54 000 miles or 87 000 kilometers
above its surface which coincidentally matches the exact location of one of saturn's outer rings
on earth this distance is less than 6200 miles 10 000 kilometers above its surface thankfully
our own moon is a very safe 236 thousand miles or 380 000 kilometers but not too far from our
own little solar system lives another planet with a very unique ring structure that could
easily put saturn to shame the lord of the rings what is even crazier is that we just came across
another planet similar to saturn except for the fact that its ring system is over 200 times larger
planet j1407b dubbed super saturn is located in the constellation of centaurus roughly 420
light years away from earth this exoplanet was discovered back in 2012 by the university of
rochester in new york in the united states this massive saturn-like planet appears to be the
first planet outside our solar system to have rings similar to Saturn according to astronomer
eric mamacic who led the team responsible for discovering this relatively young planet
this planet is in all essence a Saturn on steroids it orbits a host star named j1407
this star is estimated to be very similar to our sun and roughly 90 of its mass scientists believe
it is relatively young at only 16 million years old whereas our sun was formed approximately 4.6
billion years ago meaning that v1400 centauri is just a baby in astronomical years it has a surface
temperature of 5757 kelvin nearly the same as the sun which has a surface temperature of 5778 kelvin
from the surface of j1407b its star would look almost identical to the sun as viewed
from the earth now let's dive into some of the reasons that make this super saturn so unique
j1407b's ring system consists of about 37 rings each of which is tens of millions of kilometers
in diameter it is estimated that the outermost string has a whopping diameter somewhere between
120 and 180 million kilometers which is more than 200 times larger than the rings of saturn
to put that into perspective the distance from the earth to the sun is about 148 million kilometers
dr matthew kenworthy of leiden observatory estimates the ring system likely contains an
earth's worth of mass in light obscuring dust particles and went on to say
if we could replace saturn's rings with the rings around j1407b they would be easily visible in the
night sky in fact it would appear to us several times larger than the full moon it would certainly
make an awe-inspiring sight and give a little extra flair to our already beautiful night sky
though it's hard to calculate with the limited information we have currently
this massive exoplanet is estimated to be 20 times bigger than saturn it also has an extremely
long orbit as it takes an entire decade to orbit its sun which would mean that if there is alien
life on this planet they would not be able to celebrate their birthdays as often as ourselves
we know so little about this celestial body that we're not completely sure if it is a planet or a
brown dwarf due to its huge mass in fact so little is known about this planet that the
university team who discovered this super saturn are encouraging amateur astronomers to take out
their telescopes and keep an eye on star j1407 in hopes they may observe the rings eclipsing it
again and report the results to the american association of variable star observers which
collects astronomical data on stars that change in brightness at the moment there isn't enough
budget or manpower to collect more data from this planet which is extremely unfortunate if we could
learn more about j1407b we could learn how saturn came to be perhaps at one point in time it looked
very similar to this humongous planet perhaps if we could gather more data we could learn how moons
are born and perhaps it could finally reveal how some of these massive new planets are born
it is a shame that such vital projects aim to understand the intricacies of the cosmos
are constrained by the amount of budget an observatory has at its disposal but for now
we have to accept this grim reality and help fund these organizations that are doing the real work
to answer the most important questions of all how the universe came to be thank you all for watching
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