Saturn by and large is one of the solar systems most interesting planets.
And that was before they got 20 new moons!
Join us as we break down how these discoveries were made.
8.
Wait, Saturn Has How Many Moons Now?
And How Did We "Just Find" The Rest?
If you're wondering how many moons Saturn officially has now, that would be 82 as of
October 2019, which means Saturn is now the planet in our solar system with the most moons.
Which is quite a feat as Jupiter was the planet who had the most moons with 79.
Which was already a massive number, yet Saturn is now the moon king with 82.
Can you picture that?
Think about what Earth would be like if it had 82 moons orbiting around it in various
kinds of ways.
Granted, they would have to be proportioned the right way because Saturn is much bigger
than Earth, but still, try and picture it.
Think about all those moons in the night sky, and the effects they would have on our planet...it's
hard to think about, right?
But I'm sure you're wondering one simple question, "How did we miss all of these moons?
I mean, haven't we been watching Saturn for a long time now?"
And yeah, it may seem odd that these moons are just now being discovered, and we'll break
down what makes these particular moons so special.
But in short, you need to remember one thing about space...we're not watching it like a
television, we're more akin to watching it like a series of still images.
Sure, we have satellites and probes in space that provide imagery from the solar system
and technically beyond, beyond those are just images and not video footage.
So even at the best of times we're missing potential key information within the time
it takes to take those two pictures.
That's why there's still so much about space that we don't know about.
So missing a couple dozen moons?
Yeah, that's par for the course to be honest.
7.
Not The First Time New Moons Were Discovered In Recent Years
But here's a twist on the new moons that were found around Saturn, we should've gotten clues
much earlier that they were there.
Not because of grand cosmological events that were going on, or even technology growth,
but rather, in 2004, we found two new moons around Saturn.
And the two that were found were very much like the ones that we just discovered.
The moons themselves were found by the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens spacecraft and were first
viewed by Dr Sebastien Charnoz, a planetary dynamicist working with the imaging team at
the University of Paris.
What was another twist on this was that one of the moons that was found was technically
spotted by a craft 23 years prior to that, but they didn't know it was a moon.
How does that work?
Simple, the moons that were found weren't that big.
One was three kilometers across, and the other was only 4 kilometers across.
That's pretty small for a moon, especially considering some of the other moons that are
currently orbiting Saturn like Titan.
Another key part of this was that the moons were actually within the orbits of other moons.
Not orbiting other moons to be clear (as that would both be slightly impossible and also
mean it's not a moon) but rather by being in the direct paths of their orbits.
So that made it hard to distinguish and find them since the smallest Saturian moon before
that point was 20 kilometers across.
It also didn't help that their orbits took them much farther from the planet than you
would expect for such small moons, so it's a wonder that we found them at all.
One more thing, at the time of that discovery, the moons of Saturn were only about 33, so
that means we've found 50 new moons since then basically, including the 20 that were
recently found.
6.
The 20 New Moons Alright, so let's now move on to the new moons
that have been discovered around Saturn.
They were found by Carnegie Institution for Science's Scott S. Sheppard and his team in
2019.
And this is where things get interesting.
As noted in the last entry, Saturn has been known to have small moons, but each of the
20 that were just found are no bigger than 5 kilometers.
That's a lot of small moons, but if you can believe it, that's not the weirdest thing
about this new set of moons.
That would be that these moons...rotate backwards.
Or at least 17 of them do.
They have what is known as a "retrograde orbit", meaning that they go around the planet in
the opposite direction of the other moons.
This kind of rotation is not unheard of, but it is weird that this many of the new moons
have that kind of orbit.
Though it could speak to how we weren't able to see these new moons until now.
Because if we're looking for something going one direction, and yet we find something going
in another direction...would we care about what we saw?
Regardless, the discovery of these moons is huge, as it shows we're getting better at
spotting things like this, and that there could be even more discoveries like this for
planets like Saturn and even Jupiter in the future:
"Using some of the largest telescopes in the world, we are now completing the inventory
of small moons around the giant planets," Sheppard said.
"They play a crucial role in helping us determine how our Solar System's planets formed and
evolved."
But that does raise one big question, why is it these planets have so many moons?
Before we answer that, be sure to like the video and subscribe to the channel, that way
you don't miss all of our weekly videos!
5.
The Birth Of New Moons So let's get to the heart of this matter,
there are a LOT of small moons around Saturn, and a lot of them have been discovered in
the last 15 years or so.
But, obviously, these moons have been around for a long, LONG time.
Surely they can't have just appeared and then we noticed them.
And they didn't.
But how then did they get made?
Well, when we think of moons, we think of celestial bodies that came around during the
big bang, or are the remnants of planets that have been damaged (which is what many people
think of our moons).
But there's another way of thinking about it.
And that's that there were moons or other massive rocky bodies in space that collided
together, broke apart, and then eventually formed small moons.
It's not as unlikely as you might expect given the very nature of space in regards to various
amounts of flying debris.
Plus, this would explain why some of these moons are in such tight groupings:
“This kind of grouping of outer moons is also seen around Jupiter, indicating violent
collisions occurred between moons in the Saturnian system or with outside objects such as passing
asteroids or comets,” explained Sheppard.
This potential explanation for the moons also gives credence to certain beliefs about the
solar system and the universe at large.
“In the Solar System’s youth, the Sun was surrounded by a rotating disk of gas and
dust from which the planets were born.
It is believed that a similar gas-and-dust disk surrounded Saturn during its formation,”
Sheppard said.
“The fact that these newly discovered moons were able to continue orbiting Saturn after
their parent moons broke apart indicates that these collisions occurred after the planet
formation process was mostly complete and the disks were no longer a factor.”
Given these factors, it's possible that Saturn, Jupiter, and maybe other planets in the outer
limits of the solar system have moons that we honestly haven't discovered yet.
All we have to do is go and find them.
"Studying the orbits of these moons can reveal their origins, as well as information about
the conditions surrounding Saturn at the time of its formation," Sheppard said.
4.
How To Name A Moon In biology, there is a certain unwritten rule
about brand new discoveries.
Mainly, if you discover a new species of life, from an animal down to a bacteria or virus,
you are able to name it whatever you want.
And that has led to some interesting names (in the scientific sense at least) over the
years.
Such as a bacteria named after Sonic The Hedgehog, or a snail being named after Steve Irwin (at
least one of these makes sense when you look it up, I promise).
So that brings up the question of celestial bodies and how you name them.
Usually, when you think about planets outside of our solar system, they're named after stars,
or have a certain scientific name attached to them with lots of numbers and letters strewn
together.
But in our solar system at least, we like to have a little more fun with everything.
Mainly, we like to name the moons after mythologies, and according to Dr. Sheppard, this will be
no different.
However, he and his team won't be naming them, you will be:
“I was so thrilled with the amount of public engagement over the Jupiter moon-naming contest
that we’ve decided to do another one to name these newly discovered Saturnian moons,”
Sheppard said.
“This time, the moons must be named after giants from Norse, Gallic or Inuit mythology.
Yep, it's true, if you got to this website (https://carnegiescience.edu/NameSaturnsMoons)
and get a name in before December 6th, you'll be in the running to have named one of Saturn's
20 new moons.
But remember, you're going to be going up against a lot of people, so many try and go
for one of the lesser gods that isn't being named by everyone else.
Just a tip to consider.
So consider this a fun way to celebrate the new moons being found.
3.
What These Moons Mean In The Grander Sense Ok, so we've broken down how the moons have
been found, where they may have come from, how we missed them for so long and even how
they are going to be named.
But that leaves us with...what now?
What are we going to do with these moons that we have just discovered?
A good question, and as with all questions of this nature, it has to do with us (humanity)
as a species, and our hope for our future amongst the stars.
You see, while many people just think about Mars, or Venus, or some worlds that are outside
of our solar system as the places that humanity will habitate eventually, there are many in
NASA and beyond that are looking at moons for us to live on.
One of the best candidates for example is the Saturn moon of Titan, which has not only
an atmosphere, but also plenty of gasses for us to make power from and thus ensure that
we could live a self-sustained life there.
And that's just with one moon, now imagine that being across 20 or so.
2.
Could We Really Live On Any Of These New Moons?
So yes, this brings up a fair point about whether we could live on a moon that is only
about 5 kilometers across, and what would be the point of living on such a small moon.
On one hand, you're right, even in the best of circumstances a 5-kilometer wide moon wouldn't
be able to fit a whole bunch of people.
But, it would be able to fit some.
What's more, it could be used maybe not as a colony for a whole bunch of people, but
instead a waypoint station that would be a stopping point for those who are traveling
to certain areas of the solar system.
Not unlike how certain islands are treated as "refueling stations" on Earth because of
their size and location.
Obviously, we're jumping the gun a bit because we know next to nothing about these moons
outside of the fact that they exist.
But, they do exist, and if even one of them has the potential, large or small, to house
humanity in any way, we might just take that bet.
Especially since humanity is trying to make its way to Mars in the next few years or so.
And if we do go to Titan eventually, having a waypoint station on another moon of Saturn
could make things much easier.
Or, it could be a moon of Jupiter, you never know.
The point is, the possibilities are there, we just need to wait and see if they'll be
brought to light.
1.
The Moon Question There's been a lot of facts and figures and
stats thrown at you in this video, but let's boil it all down, shall we?
Saturn now has 82 moons, and now there's a potential that Jupiter, Saturn, and the other
gas giants in the solar system have even more moons than we've ever dared to think about.
What does this mean?
Simple, it means we need to learn even more about our solar system.
We need to point our eyes to the stars above and see what else is waiting for us out there.
It's 2019 and we've learned that there are things floating out there that we had no clue
about.
That's scary, but it's also exciting.
Because if we've missed ALL of these moons, what else have we missed?
What else could be out there waiting for us?
What is the next big discovery that we are going to make?
We don't know, but that's part of the fun, the mystery.
What's next?
Thanks for watching everyone!
What do you think of the discovery of these new moons of Saturn?
Can you believe that they were there for who knows how long and were only just discovered?
Are you going to try and name one of the moons?
Let me know in the comments below, be sure to subscribe, and I'll see you next time on
the channel!