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Lightning caused spokes on Saturn's rings?

LONDON: Saturn's nearly perfect rings make it the most beautiful object in our solar system, but the reasons for the aberrations that have been spotted on the rings that make them look like they have been smudged, may now have an explanation.

According to researchers at Germany's Max Planck Institut, lightning could be the reason for the puzzling streaks in its rings.

Geraint Jones of the Institute's Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, and his team found that massive thunderstorms in the planet's atmosphere were giving rise to the mysterious spokes in Saturn's rings.

The strikes are ten thousand times more energetic than those on Earth, and release beams of electrons that surge up from Saturn's surface to whack into the rings and blast out jets of electrically charged dust.

However, the idea, proposed by Jones and his colleagues in Geophysical Research Letters, is still speculative, as no one has ever seen storm-induced electron beams on Saturn, reports Nature. The spokes are transient, building up over a period of a few hours and then disappearing again several hours later.

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