(Bob Jenkins) wrote in message om...
Hah! I bet I have an explanation of Saturn's rings, including the
ripples and braids. It's just a four-body resonance strange
attractor. There's Saturn. Then there's two very small moons close
together in resonance (7:8 or such). Those moons close together form
a gravitational basin, sort of like the Lagrange points set up by
Sun+Jupiter. And there is a bunch of pebble like stuff orbiting the
center of that basin, like marbles in a bowl. Like the Trojan
asteroids in the Sun+Jupiter's lagrange point. Fancier stuff, like
ring particles interacting or something special about Saturn's
oblateness, wouldn't be relevant.

If that's right, I should have no trouble throwing together a
simulation of it with my orbit applet. I'll try that tonight.

I seem to be wrong. Any two nearby moons will precess relative to
each other, because they are near each other, which makes them wobble
back and forth relative to each other if they are in resonance. That
wobbling means that any gravitation basin formed between them is a
moving target.

Google shows up articles suggesting the rings are simple resonances
with single moons.