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Rawal's Saturn moon theory corroborated by new discovery

The discovery by a team of international astronomers of four satellites around Saturn bringing the total number of satellites for the planet to 22, reported in the media on Friday, corroborates Rawal's Theory of the formation of solar and satellite systems.

The existence of these satellites at a distance of 15 million kilometres was predicted by Rawal, at present Director of the Nehru Planetarium in Bombay, in the June 1981 issue of Earth, Moon and Planets where he considered possible locations for rings or other orbiting bodies based on Laplace's relation.

In 1981, he had said that the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn could all have 'so far unobserved' objects revolving around them, Rawal told PTI on Friday.

Later in 1989, Rawal had, in the same international journal (vol 44, pages 265-274), tabulated some distances pertaining to the satellites and rings in the Saturnian system and stated that at a distance of 15,410,000 km there existed an orbit where unknown satellites should exist.

Rawal had said in the 1970s that scientists had the problem of understanding the formation of the solar system, the planetary distance law and its various aspects such as rings around planets, angular momentum and matter distribution.

Rawal showed the similarities between the formation of the solar system and the satellite systems.

Rawal said he also worked out the formation of satellite system and its various aspects like satellite distance law, angular momentum and mass distribution and other problems. This led to the prediction of the existence of unknown satellites.

According to Rawal, "They are regular satellites of Saturn revolving around it at a distance of 15 million km from the centre of the planet."

The moon is at a distance of 384,000 km from the centre of the Earth.

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