The Impact of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 Sends Ripples Through the Rings of Jupiter

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Source:  M. R. Showalter, Science 

Excerpt: Jupiter’s main ring shows vertical corrugations reminiscent of those recently detected in the rings of Saturn. The Galileo spacecraft imaged a pair of superimposed ripple patterns in 1996 and again in 2000. These patterns behave as two independent spirals.... We associate this with the Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacts of July 1994. ...Impacts by comets or their dust streams are regular occurrences in planetary rings, altering them in ways that remain detectable decades later.

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