NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has revealed that Neptune's inner moons are unlike anything else in the outer solar system — and may be the exposed guts of ancient icy worlds torn apart billions of years ago.
Caltech researchers using JWST found magnesium-rich clay minerals on Neptune's inner moons, the first such detection beyond Jupiter, according to a study published Wednesday in Science Advances.caltech+1
The minerals require liquid water to form and likely originated deep inside much larger ancient moons destroyed when Triton was gravitationally captured by Neptune.caltech+1
An unidentified hydrated mineral found on all three moons matches nothing in existing spectral libraries, leaving key questions about Neptune's violent history unanswered.caltech