Saturn’s iconic ice rings may not be there for future skygazers, according to a new study.
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which was launched in 1997 and placed in orbit around the giant gaseous planet from 2004 to 2017, has collected a lot of new data that makes it possible to estimate the rings’ lifespans and when they may disappear.
boy rings…
While our solar system and the planets that make it up are about 4.6 billion years old, data from Cassini have led to a new discovery. The theory that rings form long after Saturn’s original formation is widely held, according to studies published May 12-15 in the journals Icarus and Science Advances.
“Our inescapable conclusion is that Saturn’s rings must be relatively young by astronomical standards, only a few hundred million years old,” said Richard Durisen, professor of astronomy at Indiana University (States States) and lead author of the two studies published in Icarus.
According to the researchers, it’s likely that the seven rings were still forming when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
They consist of 95% ice particles, reflect sunlight and appear white. But white is messy. Dust, which consists of grains of rock, metal, or carbon-rich materials, gradually darkens the rings by depositing on them.
Knowing the flow of dust around Saturn and estimating the amount deposited on the rings, the researchers were able to give a range of ages for the rings.
In 13 years, the cosmic dust analyzer was able to detect 163 dust grains from outside the Saturn system. The rings were surprisingly “clean,” suggesting they may not have been there long enough to collect excess cosmic dust.
Who will not grow old?
In fact, the rings are polluted by small meteorites that collide with the ice particles and accelerate their fall onto the planet. Cassini observed that the rings would lose several tons of matter every second as a result. Researchers estimate that the rings will last a few hundred million years at most.
Paul Estrada, a researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center and co-author of the three studies, concludes, “We have shown that massive rings like Saturn don’t last long.” It’s reasonable to assume that the relatively small rings around the others Our solar system’s ice and gas giants (Uranus and Neptune) are remnants of rings that were once as massive as Saturn’s. Perhaps in the not too distant future Saturn’s rings will look more astronomically like the sparse rings of Uranus.
Future missions to study some of Saturn’s moons could provide more information about the events that led to the formation of the rings and lead to more discoveries.