Stochastic flights of propellers
Report Number
817
Abstract
Kilometer-sized moonlets in Saturn’s A ring create S-shaped wakes called “propellers”
in surrounding material. The Cassini spacecraft has tracked the motions of propellers
for several years and finds that they deviate from Keplerian orbits having constant
semimajor axes. The inferred orbital migration is known to switch sign.We show using
a statistical test that the time series of orbital longitudes of the propeller Blériot is
consistent with that of a time-integrated Gaussian random walk. That is, Blériot’s
observed migration pattern is consistent with being stochastic. We further show, using
a combination of analytic estimates and collisional N-body simulations, that stochastic
migration of the right magnitude to explain the Cassini observations can be driven
by encounters with ring particles 10–20 m in radius. That the local ring mass is
concentrated in decameter-sized particles is supported on independent grounds by
occultation analyses.
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