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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday December 19 2018, @07:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the spray-and-wash dept.

NASA Research Reveals Saturn is Losing Its Rings at "Worst-Case-Scenario" Rate

New NASA research confirms that Saturn is losing its iconic rings at the maximum rate estimated from Voyager 1 & 2 observations made decades ago. The rings are being pulled into Saturn by gravity as a dusty rain of ice particles under the influence of Saturn's magnetic field.

"We estimate that this 'ring rain' drains an amount of water products that could fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool from Saturn's rings in half an hour," said James O'Donoghue of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "From this alone, the entire ring system will be gone in 300 million years, but add to this the Cassini-spacecraft measured ring-material detected falling into Saturn's equator, and the rings have less than 100 million years to live. This is relatively short, compared to Saturn's age of over 4 billion years." O'Donoghue is lead author of a study on Saturn's ring rain appearing in Icarus [DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2018.10.027] [DX] December 17.

Scientists have long wondered if Saturn was formed with the rings or if the planet acquired them later in life. The new research favors the latter scenario, indicating that they are unlikely to be older than 100 million years, as it would take that long for the C-ring to become what it is today assuming it was once as dense as the B-ring. "We are lucky to be around to see Saturn's ring system, which appears to be in the middle of its lifetime. However, if rings are temporary, perhaps we just missed out on seeing giant ring systems of Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, which have only thin ringlets today!" O'Donoghue added.

It's time to mine the rings.


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  • (Score: 2) by corey on Wednesday December 19 2018, @08:11PM (2 children)

    by corey (2202) on Wednesday December 19 2018, @08:11PM (#776492)

    Olympic sized swimming pool, oh now I understand. How big compared to the size of Texas?

    I think the SI people should review the standard measure of volume to replace m^3 with Olympic sized swimming pools.

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  • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday December 19 2018, @09:04PM (1 child)

    by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Wednesday December 19 2018, @09:04PM (#776530)

    This is what you're looking for. [theregister.co.uk] You're welcome.

      It looks like 1 olympic sized swimming pool can be converted into walnuts: 29875712.5, grapefruits: 4780114 and other such useful comparisons. Some research might be required to determine what a Bulgarian airbag is, turn off safe search, and don't do it at work is my advice.

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @09:53PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @09:53PM (#776555)

      You need to convert to seconds. If one year was like one second then Saturn's rings would disappear within:

      100,000,000/(60*60*24*365) ~ 3.17 years

      So it will happen by 2022, that is (possibly, even probably?) within our lifetimes and much better than this crappy story about it happening long after we are gone.