ccwebb Posted August 23, 2013 Share Posted August 23, 2013 I watched an old episode on History Channel called "Alien Moons." There was a comment that was made that lead to some confusion. They went on explaining how it is theorized how a moon got to close to Saturn, and Saturn's gravity "tore it apart" and became the rings of Saturn. They went on to describe the theory of how earth's moon was formed, with earth hitting another planet. Why wouldn't earth's gravity "tear the rouge planet apart"? On that same line, why doesn't the sun have rings around it? Wouldn't the sun's gravity be strong enough to tear everything apart and turn it into a ring system? Oh...and Shoemaker-Levi 9, why didn't that get "torn apart"... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moontanman Posted August 23, 2013 Share Posted August 23, 2013 (edited) I watched an old episode on History Channel called "Alien Moons." There was a comment that was made that lead to some confusion. They went on explaining how it is theorized how a moon got to close to Saturn, and Saturn's gravity "tore it apart" and became the rings of Saturn. They went on to describe the theory of how earth's moon was formed, with earth hitting another planet. Why wouldn't earth's gravity "tear the rouge planet apart"? On that same line, why doesn't the sun have rings around it? Wouldn't the sun's gravity be strong enough to tear everything apart and turn it into a ring system? Oh...and Shoemaker-Levi 9, why didn't that get "torn apart"... Shoemaker-levi 9 did get torn apart but it wasn't in orbit around Jupiter, the supposed moon of Saturn was in orbit, when it was torn apart the pieces were still in orbit but within the Roche limit. The impactor that struck the earth was not in orbit but it hit hard enough to throw a small portion of the impactor into orbit but outside Earth's Roche limit. The Earth probably did have rings for a short while but Shoemaker-Levi 9 didn't throw any debris into orbit because it was so small in relation to Jupiter... The Earth's impactor was too big to be torn completely apart by earth's gravity before it struck but I am sure it was distorted quite a bit upon impact... Nothing orbits the sun inside it's Roche limit... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roche_limit Edited August 23, 2013 by Moontanman 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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