“A “grazing encounter” may have smashed the moon to bits to form Saturn’s rings, a new study suggests.”
Solar system formation
At SciNews: Study: Massive Galilean Moons Prevented Formation of Giant Ring System around Jupiter
“We found that the Galilean moons of Jupiter, one of which is the largest moon in our Solar System, would very quickly destroy any large rings that might form,” Dr. Kane said.
At Quanta: Astronomers Reimagine the Making of the Planets
Observations of faraway planets have forced a near-total rewrite of the story of how our solar system came to be.
At Nautilus: Were It Not for Cosmic Good Fortune, We Wouldn’t Be Here
Sean Raymond, Beibei Liu & Seth Jacobson offer a solar system model affirming that the “dynamical instability” of our early solar system had to go just right, or we probably wouldn’t be here.