Rings on Saturn???

Why do the rings on Saturn look so perfect ie have perfect looking gaps
around them.
How does this actually happen or work?????????

In article ,
"Jo & MickD" wrote:

Why do the rings on Saturn look so perfect ie have perfect looking gaps
around them.

We're too far away to see much of the fine detail.

How does this actually happen or work?????????

Take a look at the latest ring pictures from Cassini...and get *really*
confused. There is a lot of fine detail, compression waves, scalloped
edges, braiding and so on.

Why do the rings on Saturn look so perfect ie have perfect looking gaps
around them.

obviously the nasa artists did a wonderful almost too good job. there is no
probe around saturn, its all made up.

I HOPE EVERYONE REALIZES I AM OBVIOUSLY JOKING!
HAVE A GREAT DAY!

"Jo & MickD"
the rings on Saturn
How does this actually happen or work?????????

You have asked a really large question. There are dozens of scholarly
papers that have made numerous specific predictions about what would be
found in the rings once good photos were taken.

These papers, and the detailed predictions, cover scalloped edges,
twisting, spirals, gaps, and basically every aspect of ring physics.
Most of the predictions are based on Newtonian gravitational formulae,
and how particles interact with shepherd moons, etc.

So now the scientists are saying that the predictions made in the
theoretical papers can now be observed in the Cassini photos.

Once scientist remarked that the estimated age of the rings is on the
order of a few hundred million years.

An interesting statistic is that if the rings were combined into a single
body it would make a ball about 100 km in diameter.

digression (There was some damned fool at the press conference who
wanted the panel to translate km/sec into mph for his news article. If I
had been in the room I would have been too happy to shoot this worthless
SOB in the head.) end digression

My guess is that a large comet was captured and torn apart. It amazes me
that ice can persist in a vacuum without evaporating. So my knowledge of
physics is incomplete as well.

The prediction and observation of ring physics is not an abstract
endeavor since the same rules that shape Saturn's rings also determined
the distribution of matter in the proto-solar-system disk. The solar
system as we know it was once a disk of dust circling the new Sun
about...what....at least 5-6 billion years ago. It turns out that the
Universe is a disk-making machine, on the local level, and so Saturn's
rings provide a good textbook for understanding the general case of disks
and rings.

So while I have not gone into specifics regarding ring phenomena, it is
important to point out that the physics of rings is well understood (i.e.
predicted features have been confirmed by observations.)

KB

There was some damned fool at the press conference who wanted the
panel to translate km/sec into mph for his news article.

Well, you're kind of stuck either way. If you don't translate it for
him, he'll do it himself, and probably get it wrong :-).

Of course the best of both worlds is to have NASA PAO do the
translation, *and* get it wrong.

Or just use a unit which everyone can understand (:-)). For small
distances this is, by precedent and acclamation "widths of a human
hair". For spacecraft, hmm, I dunno, "twice as fast as the space
shuttle in orbit"? "30 times as fast as the flight where Chuck Yeager
broke the sound barrier"?

"Jim Kingdon" Or just use a unit which everyone can understand

km/s