Abstract
Vast ethereal rings composed of micrometre-sized particles have been detected about the three giant planets so far visited by Voyager. Jupiter's diffuse halo, main ring1 and gossamer ring2 are visible because of the dust they contain. Small particles are also important constituents of Saturn's tenuous outlying rings: the contorted slender F ring3, the G ring4–6 and the extensive E ring6,7. At Uranus, dust was discerned by imaging8 amidst, as well as inwards of, the nine previously known narrow rings; plasma measurements9,10 suggest that micrometre grains are also present in an orbit of 4.4 times the planet's radius, where Voyager 2 pierced the planet's equatorial plane. Here we identify an orbital evolution mechanism for gravitationally dominated dust that may tem-porarily overwhelm other processes, and we derive evolution rates that agree with numerical integrations; we also indicate briefly how this process could affect the location of the faint rings evident today.
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Burns, J., Schaffer, L. Orbital evolution of circumplanetary dust by resonant charge variations. Nature 337, 340–343 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1038/337340a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/337340a0
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