In the same way that forensic scientists examine fingerprints at a crime scene to identify the murderer,astronomers working with data from NASA’s New Horizons , Cassini and Galileo missionscan find signs ofComet fragment collisions with the rings of Saturn and Jupiter.
In the second half of1983,a comet hit the rings of Saturn. Almost a decade later, another comet namedShoemaker-Levy collided with Jupiter. These events tilted and left residual wave patterns in the rings of both planets, according to a pair of studies published today in the journal.Science, which suggest thatthe rings of a planet can act as a historical record of each cometWhat’s up. Studying the subtle spiral patterns these celestial bodies leave in their path allows scientists to reproduce the history of impacts even three decades after they occurred. “Now we know that the rings of the planets record these impactsLike the grooves on a vinyl record, and that we can reproduce the ‘music’ of their previous history, “suggests Mark Showalter, a researcher at the SETi Institute and co-author of the study.
The findings could also provide a new way tostudy comet populations in the outer solar systemSince by observing changes in the planetary rings, scientists could discover how often comets and other small objects encounter planets and thus determine how many of these small objects exist in the outer solar system.
