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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.
(Score: 3, Funny) by ikanreed on Wednesday December 19 2018, @08:42PM (5 children)
At least one extinction-level asteroid strike, likely 2, hundreds of super volcanoes, the end of total solar eclipses being possible, the development of several new phyla of animals, the continental plate for south america will have reconnected with Europe and Africa(probably), and the earth will finally be as old as your mom.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @09:05PM (1 child)
doesn't south america still need to cross the entire pacific in order to reconnect with africa?
or is there any actual reason to expect it to simply stop moving away from africa, and reverse course?
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday December 19 2018, @09:37PM
To be honest, I just looked up the projected movement. I cannot speak for the actual analysis of what tectonic forces are at play.
(Score: 4, Funny) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday December 19 2018, @09:07PM (1 child)
My mum's pretty old. She can remember when Paul McCartney was in a band.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Thursday December 20 2018, @05:52AM
Not funny. I can remember young Paul before he was playing in a band...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @09:24PM
The last total solar eclipse is about 600 million years out. Unless that's a really old popular mechanics article. https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon-mars/a27824/when-is-last-total-solar-eclipse/ [popularmechanics.com]
There's a last due to