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.
Related Stories
Saturn Put A Ring On It Relatively Recently, Study Says
Saturn is famous for its lovely rings, but a new study suggests the planet has spent most of its 4.5 billion years without them. That's because the rings are likely only 10 million to 100 million years old, according to a newly published report [open, DOI: 10.1126/science.aat2965] [DX] in the journal Science that's based on findings from NASA's Cassini probe.
Cassini spent some 13 years orbiting Saturn before plunging down and slamming into its atmosphere. During its final orbits, the spacecraft dove between the planet and its rings. That let scientists measure the gravitational effect of the rings and get a good estimate of the ring material's mass.
What they found is that it's only about 40 percent of the mass of Saturn's moon Mimas, which is way smaller than Earth's moon. This small mass suggests that the rings are relatively young. That's because the rings seem to be made of extremely pure water ice, suggesting that the bright white rings have not existed long enough to be contaminated by the bombardment of messy, dirty comets that would be expected to occur over billions of years. Some scientists thought it was possible that darker debris from comets might lie beneath the bright ice, undetectable to their instruments, but this new study shows that isn't the case.
Related: Saturn's 'Ring Rain' is a Surprising Cocktail of Chemicals
Most of Saturn's Rings Could Disappear Within 100 Million Years
(Score: 2) by corey on Wednesday December 19 2018, @08:11PM (2 children)
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.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday December 19 2018, @09:04PM (1 child)
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
You need to convert to seconds. If one year was like one second then Saturn's rings would disappear within:
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @08:24PM (2 children)
We screwed now.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday December 19 2018, @09:26PM
I'm definitely gonna miss them.
(Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Thursday December 20 2018, @04:47AM
I'll probably miss it then, I'll be busy playing Tekken X Street Fighter which is set to release at about the same time.
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Wednesday December 19 2018, @08:41PM (1 child)
See a shooting star? That's money. Asteroid slams into Jupiter? Money. Interstellar object enters and exits the solar system? More money. Rings of Saturn gradually fall into the planet? Moneymoneymoney.
That's money being lost forever. We should be capturing all of it within the next few hundred years.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @08:53PM
Got a mod that rhymes.
(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
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 20 2018, @07:11AM
Global De-ringing is fake news by the Uranians to get socialistic funding! So sad.