Why are Saturn's rings in its equatorial plane?

[KurtLudwig]

TL;DR Summary

What mechanism pulled small ice and stone particles preferentially into orbiting in the equatorial plane of Saturn? Is there a resonance involved? Wikipedia says that there is no consensus. What are some hypotheses?

What mechanism pulled small ice and stone particles preferentially into orbiting in the equatorial plane of Saturn? Is there a resonance involved? Wikipedia says that there is no consensus. What are some hypotheses?

 

[malawi_glenn]

This article cover some theories about the formation of rings https://arxiv.org/abs/0912.3017

What mechanism that pulled objects in, gravity? Why in the equatorial plane? Isn't that just due to spinning objects tend to bulge out at the equator, which makes gravity stronger there so that every orbiting object will eventually end up orbiting that object around the equatorial plane due to tidal effects? This should be a well known and established theory.

 

[Bandersnatch]

Yes, that alignment should follow from basic orbital mechanics. With a bulge and a non-equatorial orbit there is an oscillating gravitational force component perpendicular to the orbital plane that acts to change the orbital inclination towards the plane of the bulge.

 

[KurtLudwig]

This article cover some theories about the formation of rings https://arxiv.org/abs/0912.3017

What mechanism that pulled objects in, gravity? Why in the equatorial plane? Isn't that just due to spinning objects tend to bulge out at the equator, which makes gravity stronger there so that every orbiting object will eventually end up orbiting that object around the equatorial plane due to tidal effects? This should be a well known and established theory.

This article cover some theories about the formation of rings https://arxiv.org/abs/0912.3017
This very detailed paper, of 76 pages, discusses different mechanisms for the creation and maintenance of Saturn's many rings. It is amazing how complex planetary astronomy can be. Thanks for referring me to this paper.