Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds.... Hebrews 1:2
"Disruption of Saturn’s ring particles by thermal stress (Hirata et al., Icarus 19 Feb 2022).
Knowing that thermal stress is at work on our moon to disrupt boulders
and grind them down to dust, these researchers considered whether that
happens in Saturn’s rings.
Spacecraft and ground-based observations show that the
main rings of Saturn lack particles larger than 10 m. Tidal or collisional destruction of satellites/comets have been proposed as the origin of the main rings; however, Saturn’s tide alone cannot grind km-sized fragments into submeter-sized particles because of the high mechanical strength of water ice and rock. The question arises as to why such large particles are not left in the current ring. It is known that thermal stress induced by diurnal and seasonal temperature variations can cause weathering and fragmentation of boulders and contribute to dust and regolith production on the Moon and terrestrial planets, and then such thermal stress can break particles larger than a critical radius while cannot smaller than the critical radius. In this study, we examined the role of thermal stress acting on Saturn’s ring particles. We found that thermal stress can grind porous ring particles larger than 10–20 m, which explains the lack of particles larger than 10 m in Saturn’s ring. Also, fragmentation by thermal stress can be adoptable for the ε rings of Uranus.
The only solar system bodies with large boulders, they say further, are found in “geologically active provinces such as the tiger stripes of Enceladus, where boulders are supplied by recent geological activity.”
---A follow-up question should be why bodies
as small as Enceladus should be active after 4.5 billion Darwin Years.
That question was not asked." CEH
