Abstract:
The true reason, in our opinion, for the partition of Saturn's ring as well as the rings of other planets into a large number of small subrings is found. This reason is clarified by the Zelikin–Lokutsievskiy–Hildebrand theorem about the fractal structure of solutions to generic piecewise smooth Hamiltonian systems. The instability of the two-dimensional model of the ring with continuous surface density of the distribution of particles is proved both for the Newton and Boltzmann equations. We do not claim that we have solved the problem of stability of Saturn's ring. We rather put questions and suggest some ideas and means for future research.
This work was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research
(project no. 13-01-00642-a) and by the program “Mathematical Control
Theory” of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Citation:
M. I. Zelikin, “Fractal theory of Saturn's ring”, Optimal control, Collected papers. In commemoration of the 105th anniversary of Academician Lev Semenovich Pontryagin, Trudy Mat. Inst. Steklova, 291, MAIK Nauka/Interperiodica, Moscow, 2015, 95–111; Proc. Steklov Inst. Math., 291 (2015), 87–101