Researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found evidence of a catastrophic event in Neptune’s past that destroyed ancient worlds and exposed their deep interiors. The telescope examined the composition of three of Neptune’s small inner moons — Proteus, Larissa, and Galatea — and its inner dusty rings, detecting clay minerals that are known to exist on the dwarf planet Ceres and in some meteorites.

Ancient Disaster

The minerals require prolonged contact between liquid water and rock to form, which could not have occurred on the small moons themselves. Instead, the clay had to come from the deep interior of a much larger ancient world. The discovery points to a catastrophic event in Neptune’s past that destroyed those ancient worlds and exposed their deep interiors, with the small moons and rings we see today re-forming from that wreckage.

The culprit behind this cataclysm appears to be Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, which is thought to have been captured by Neptune’s gravitational pull roughly 4.5 billion years ago. Triton’s own gravitational forces stirred up Neptune’s original moons, causing most of them to collide with each other. Neptune’s current inner moons eventually formed from some of the resultant debris.

Original reporting: Appleton, WI News Feed (HLL/CB) — read the source article.