How Saturn's Water Escapes: Magnetic Field Lines

How does water escape from Saturn? Researchers have taken a closer look and have found that it all has to do with magnetic fields.

One of the instruments on Cassini measures the planet's magnetosphere, the charged particles known as plasma that are trapped in the space surrounding Saturn by its magnetic field. One of Cassini's past discoveries is that Saturn's plasma comprises water ions, which are derived from Saturn's moon Enceladus, which spews water vapors from its Yellowstone-like geysers.

So how do water ions escape? It turns out that the plasma found a place to exhaust out of the magnetosphere at a reconnection point. This is where magnetic fields from one environment disconnect and reconnect with magnetic fields from another environment. In the case of Saturn, researchers discovered the reconnection point was located at the back of the planet, where the magnetotail was connecting with the solar winds' magnetic field.

The situation itself is a bit like a traffic circle; once you get into it, you have limited exit points.

"If you can't find the exit, you keep going around in circles," said Daniel Reisenfeld, one of the researchers, in a news release. "So, the plasma around Saturn is basically trapped to go around the rotary. We assumed it had to escape somehow and somewhere, but actually finding the jettison point is pretty cool."

The new discovery may help scientists better understand the physics of how other rapid rotators, such as Jupiter, stars and pulsars, expel their materials and the details of how it works.

The findings are published in the journal Nature Physics.

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