Two scientists from CNRS and Sorbonne University working at the Institute of Celestial Mechanics and Ephemeris Calculation have figured out the reason behind Saturn’s tilt and they also said that tilt is increasing at a very slow rate and it will be noticeable in a billion years.
According to the journal provided by the Sorbonne University working at the Institute of Celestial Mechanics and Ephemeris Calculation, the reason behind the tilt in the rotational axis of the gas giant Saturn’s is the movement of its moons. Specifically Saturn’s biggest moon Titan plays an important role in its tilt.
As time passes by Saturn’s moon is moving away from its home planet which is causing the tilt. And recent observations showed that Saturn’s moving away at a much faster rate than researchers had predicted previously. So all these new observations helped researchers to find the right reason behind this much change in tilt at this rate. They concluded that as its moon migrates further tilt increases accordingly.
All this was not like this always. Our solar system was formed 4 billion years ago and for 3 billion years Saturn had very little tilt in the rotational axis this change happened roughly over a billion years ago because of the movement of its moons they triggered a resonance effect that continues to exist today too. Researchers said right now the observed tilt in Saturn is 27°. Neptune also played an important role in Saturn’s tilt when Saturn’s axis interacted with the path of Neptune.
Now Neptune is an important factor here, Researchers agree with this resonance effect but this started after the change in Neptune’s orbit. Researchers stated that Saturn’s tilt in its rotational axis was very stable until this change happened in Neptune’s orbit over a billion years ago. This must be the reason behind all that resonance effect. They also stated that what we see now is a transitional phase over a few billion years. The tilt can double the amount of what we see today.
In our solar system, Saturn will not be the only planet to go through this tilt researchers have already predicted that after five billion years our biggest planet Jupiter will also go through this process because of the migration of its 4 moons and also its resonance with Uranus will affect that too. They said that the tilt in the biggest planet of our solar system can change from 3° to more than 30° due to the current course of actions.
