Roche Limit

Jupiter and Saturn are massive planets with intense gravitational pulls. Their gravity is so strong that their moons aren’t perfectly round—many of them are slightly elongated, stretched into a more football-like shape.

The closer a moon orbits to its planet, the more it gets stretched by tidal forces. At a certain point, these stretching forces become so powerful that they counteract the moon’s gravity holding it together. This critical distance is known as the tipping point—if a moon crosses it and moves even closer, it will be torn apart.

This boundary is called the Roche limit. Interestingly, when we look at planetary rings—like Saturn’s breathtaking rings—we see that they mostly lie within this limit. In contrast, intact moons in our solar system all orbit outside of their planet’s Roche limit.

This observation supports a fascinating theory: Saturn’s rings may have once been a moon that ventured too close and was shredded by tidal forces, leaving behind the icy debris we see today.

Gravity doesn’t just hold celestial bodies together—it can also break them apart in spectacular ways.

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