Wikipedia:Today's featured article/December 24, 2008

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Voyager 2 picture of Uranus' rings

The

aerodynamic drag from the extended Uranian exospherecorona. The rings of Uranus are thought to be relatively young, at not more than 600 million years. The mechanism that confines the narrow rings is not well understood. The Uranian ring system probably originated from the collisional fragmentation of a number of moons that once existed around the planet. After colliding, the moons broke up into numerous particles, which survived as narrow and optically dense rings only in strictly confined zones of maximum stability. (more...
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