Scientists have discovered that the secret behind Saturn's everlasting youth is the way it transport its heat across the planet.
As planets grow old they are known to become cooler and darker. However, Saturn continues to be hot and bright and looks comparatively new considering its age. This has led to a lot of curiosity among scientists. Researchers from the University of Exeter and Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon seem to have discovered the planet's secret.
According to the research, Saturn's beauty secret lies in its inability to cool down. Instead of transporting heat throughout the planet by large convective motions, the planet partly transports the heat by diffusing it across different layers of gas inside the planet.
"These separate layers effectively insulate the planet and prevent heat from radiating out efficiently," the group said in a press release. "This keeps Saturn warm and bright."
A similar layered convention has also been observed in the Earth's ocean where salty, warm water lies below less salty and cooler water. The saltier water that lies beneath prevents vertical currents from forming between the different layers, which in turn keeps heat from being transported efficiently upward.
Saturn is known to be a spectacular planet with thousands of beautiful ringlets, composed of chunks of ice and rock. The planet, which is the second biggest in the solar system, is composed of mostly helium, hydrogen and oxygen. It also has wind in its upper atmosphere that travels at a speed of 1500 km per hour.
The planet is also known to have a collection of 62 moons. Its brightest moons are mostly in orbits in the same plane as the rings, and Titan, one of the planet's moons, is the largest moon in the solar system.
