Scientists say Saturn’s rings are fading away

It’s not the fault of Rita Lee, who promised in “Excuse the Auê” that she’d steal Saturn’s rings, but they’re already disappearing. Fortunately, while science finds out, the rings are gone, but the planets remain. And the process is slow: Saturn’s rings can take nearly 300 million years to completely disappear. But calm down: They might even come back.

Saturn Recorded by NASA’s Pioneer 11 Missionsource: NASA Ames

Saturn isn’t the first to go through this process: Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also have rings, but they’re much lighter than Saturn’s beautiful cream, gray, and pale pink circles. Perhaps the process that the three planets have already gone through is the same process that the last planets are going through now.

Why does Saturn lose its rings?

As reported by Marina Corinne, a journalist for the magazine Atlantic OceanThe process, called “ring rain,” occurs over hundreds of millions of years and was spotted by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in 2017.

Illustration showing NASA’s Cassini spacecraft above Saturnsource: NASA/JPL-Caltech

According to the report, micrometeoroids reaching Saturn’s atmosphere and radiation from the Sun disturb small pieces of the ring’s material, electrifying them. These suddenly shifted particles chime with Saturn’s magnetic field lines and begin to rotate along these invisible paths. When particles get very close to the top of Saturn’s atmosphere, gravity pulls them inward and evaporates into the planet’s clouds.

Data from the Cassini mission indicate that the planet’s rings are “cosmologically young” and between 10 and 100 million years old. Therefore, most likely, they arose as a result of the approach of one of the oldest moons of Saturn, which upon close proximity to the planet shattered into cosmic fragments.

The appearance of rings on the planets

Just as episodes may disappear, new episodes may appear. According to Linda Spilker, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who worked on the Cassini mission, perhaps one day, after Saturn’s rings fade, the universe may give the planet a new constellation through another moon that “disintegrates.” The comet that is very close.

According to the report, even Mars can have rings when the young moon Phobos annihilates – which should happen between 20 and 80 million years.

For now, we continue to quietly observe the rings of Saturn and hope that it will inspire other great artists to compose works that, with luck, will last forever.