Reacción a "Reactions to study suggesting Saturn's rings and tilt may be the product of a missing moon"

Saturn's rings are undoubtedly one of the most striking structures in the solar system. Known since the first telescopic observations in the 17th century, they are the most developed and spectacular ring system we know of. However, there are still many unknowns about how, when and why they were formed. Thanks mainly to the Cassini mission, which orbited the planet between 2004 and 2017, there is now some consensus that the rings are young in astronomical terms, having formed "only" about 100 million years ago. The work by Wisdom et al. offers a plausible explanation for how this formation could have taken place. 

According to this work, Saturn may have had a moon in the past, which they call Chrysalis, which during its orbital evolution may have given rise to both the rings and other orbital peculiarities, such as the inclination of the planet's orbit, very similar to that of the Earth. This model seems to fit very elegantly with the orbital variations of other satellites such as Titan and with the gravitational interactions that the entire Saturn system establishes with nearby Neptune. Also the mass estimates fit with the idea we have of the body that, by breaking apart, could have formed the rings. Moreover, the idea that a planet that today has more than eighty known moons may have had a few more or fewer satellites is not at all far-fetched. 

In any case, although this hypothesis is apparently firm and stands up to a first detailed analysis, it will be necessary to continue studying both Saturn's rings and the complicated gravitational interactions between them, the planet, its many satellites and the neighbouring planets. Unfortunately, we will not have a space mission in the near future that can analyse this problem in situ, and we will have to make do with observations from astronomical observatories and numerical calculations such as those presented in this study.