Interior of Saturn
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Transcript: The interior of Saturn is almost certainly very similar to the interior of Jupiter, grading down from a pure simple gas in the outer atmosphere region towards molecular gas lower down, when the temperature is still cold but the pressure is high, towards metallic hydrogen at a point where the pressure is high and the temperature is high. Underneath that is likely to be an icy mantel surrounding a rocky core. Scientists do not know for certain if there are rocky cores at the center of any of the gas giant planets because those cores are very small compared to the overall size of the planets, but its almost certain that the way the planets grew was by a nucleus of rocky material which attracted and accreted by gravity the large gaseous atmosphere during the formation of the solar system.
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Transcript: Saturn's rings were first seen by Galileo in 1610. However, with the poor optics of his early telescope Galileo only saw fuzzy blobs on either side of the planet, and he actually drew Saturn as triple planet. In 1655, Christian Huygens used a superior telescope to see that the blobs...
Published 07/21/11
Transcript: Saturn, sixth planet out from the Sun, is second only to Jupiter in size and mass. Its atmospheric composition is also similar to the chemical composition of the Sun, 90 percent hydrogen, 5 percent helium, plus methane, ammonia, water vapor, and other gases. The temperature is also...
Published 07/21/11
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Published 07/21/11