FORENSIC SLEUTHING TIES RING RIPPLES TO IMPACTS

Like forensic scientists examining fingerprints at a cosmic crime scene, scientists working with data from NASA's Cassini, Galileo and New Horizons missions have traced telltale ripples in the rings of Saturn and Jupiter back to collisions with cometary fragments dating back more than 10 years ago.

The ripple-producing culprit, in the case of Jupiter, was comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, whose debris cloud hurtled through the thin Jupiter ring system during a kamikaze course into the planet in July 1994. Scientists attribute Saturn's ripples to a similar object likely another cloud of comet debris  plunging through the inner rings in the second half of 1983. The findings are detailed in a pair of papers published online today in the journal Science.

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