Ring around Saturn – Illustration: NASA
For years, scientists have debated the age and origin of Saturn’s rings (also known as Saturn’s rings). Some argue that the belt is younger than expected because it hasn’t been eroded and darkened by meteorite impacts.
Data collected during the Cassini mission supported this hypothesis. The mission’s probes orbited Saturn from 2004-2017.
According to the researchers, the gas giant’s rings formed long after Saturn’s initial formation.
“Our firm conclusion is that Saturn’s rings must be relatively young by astronomical standards, just a few hundred million years old,” Professor Richard Durisen, one of the authors, told CNN.
It is believed that these rings were still in the process of forming when dinosaurs were still roaming the Earth.
Saturn’s rings are composed mostly of ice, a small percentage of rock dust created in space by debris from colliding asteroids and micrometeorites.
During 13 years of orbiting Saturn, Cassini’s instruments collected 163 dust particles from Saturn’s rings. On further analysis, the team found that the belt was surprisingly “clean”.
This “cleaning” means that this belt doesn’t seem too long to be full of cosmic dust. Cassini has also observed that Saturn’s rings are losing many tons of mass per second.
This means that these rings will only exist for a few hundred million years. In astronomical language, that time is not much.
“Perhaps in the not-too-distant future, astronomically speaking, after Saturn’s rings are worn out, they will look more like the sparse rings of Uranus,” he said. Paul Estrada, a scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, added. .
One theory being advanced is that the smaller rings around some planets in the solar system could be the result of rings around Saturn.
Future space missions to study some of Saturn’s moons are expected to open up many other solutions, such as the events that created the rings, according to CNN.
