Hello, friends!
I love Saturn’s rings, you love Saturn’s rings, everybody loves Saturn’s rings! And as you can see in the 100% real, totally legit J.W.S.T. image below, even Saturn is a little obsessed with her own rings.
Those rings are iconic! They’re also mysterious. Did Saturn always have rings like that, or were they created more recently (perhaps by the destruction of a Saturnian moon)? The answer depends on which scientists you ask.
Saturn’s rings are mostly made of ice, the frozen water kind of ice (as opposed to methane ice, ammonia ice, nitrogen ice… lots of things turn into ice in space). But the rings aren’t a pure, icy white color. Like a pile of snow near the curb of a highway, Saturn’s rings get dirtier and dirtier over time. Based on how dirty the rings look today, some scientists believe they can calculate how old the rings must be. And according to those calculations, Saturn’s rings must have formed between 100 million and 400 million years ago. That may sound like a long time ago, but in cosmic terms that makes the rings surprisingly new.
However, there’s also research suggesting that Saturn has self-cleaning rings. Basically, here’s how that would work: when dirt and dust particles from space enter Saturn’s ring system, those particles are moving at extremely high speeds. High speed collisions vaporize the dust particles. The vaporized dust undergoes gaseous expansion. Most of the expanding gas then leaves the ring system due to a combination of its own momentum plus Saturn’s gravity plus Saturn’s magnetic field. If this is true, the rings still get dirtier and dirtier over time, but at a much slower rate. This means the rings could be up to 4.5 billion (with a b) years old. In other words, the rings could be as old as Saturn herself.
When new scientific research comes out, I think people get the wrong idea about what that means. I blame Hollywood, and I blame the media. Whenever a new scientific paper is published, it’s often portrayed as the final, definitive word of science. Until another paper comes out, contradicting the first. Then that’s portrayed as the final, definitive word of science. Until another paper comes out.
But science is more like an ongoing, back-and-forth conversation. One paper comes out, making a point. Another paper follows, making a counterpoint. Then there’s a counterpoint to the counterpoint, and then a counterpoint to the counterpoint of that counterpoint… and so on and so forth, until eventually (hopefully) the scientific community reaches some sort of consensus.
So how old are Saturn’s rings? Well, while researching this blog post, the most recently published paper I saw said 4.5 billion years; however, I think this is still an ongoing conversation. New points are still being made. New counterpoints are still being offered. Maybe the rings are super ancient, or maybe they’re relatively young. Science has figured out a lot of things, but on this question about Saturn’s rings, I think we’re still waiting for the scientific community to reach a consensus.
WANT TO LEARN MORE?
Maybe Saturn’s rings relatively young. Click here to read more about that, or click here to see an actual research paper on that hypothesis.
Or maybe Saturn’s rings are super old. Click here for an article on that, or click here to see the actual research.
Okay, I lied. That wasn’t really a J.W.S.T. image of Saturn. I drew that myself. If you like my drawings, please consider visiting the I-Love-Space store on RedBubble. Even if you don’t buy anything, just visiting and maybe clicking the like button on my art helps me a lot. Thank you, friends!
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