AST101H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Giant Planet, Solid Nitrogen, Ring System
6 Sep 2018
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Tiny solid cores buried under thick layers of liquid and gas. The rotation of uranus is tipped on it"s side, compared to the plane of the ecliptic. The weight of everything above compresses lower levels in a planet. With enough pressure, hydrogen can turn a gas into a metal. Because of the extreme pressure, jupiter"s core is compressed to about the size of earth. Jupiter"s core is about 10 times the mass of the earth. Saturn is 3. 3 times less massive than jupiter, so the lower levels are compressed less. So it ends up being nearly the same size. Gravity + resonance creates a gap in the ring. The diameter of the rings is over 260 000 km but they are less than 0. 1 km thick. Moons create a gap in the rings due to gravity. Moon orbits slower than inner ring particle. Pulls ring particle backward and slows it down. Moon orbits faster than outer ring particle.
