Saturn’s rings are only 400 million years old: they are therefore much younger than their planet, which was formed 4.5 billion years ago. This is demonstrated by the study of the dust that has accumulated there over time, analyzed thanks to NASA’s Cassini mission from the University of Colorado at Boulder. The results are published in the journal Science Advances.
Researchers led by physicist Sascha Kempf have dated Saturn’s ice rings by assessing how quickly they are covered by the dust left by the small grains of rocky material that constantly travel through the solar system. In other words, it’s a bit like figuring out if a house is old by running your finger across its dusty surfaces. “Think of rings like the carpet in your home,” explains Kempf. “If you have a clean carpet on the floor, all you have to do is wait. The dust will settle on it. The same goes for the rings”.
Quantifying this process has not been easy. Between 2004 and 2017, researchers used an instrument aboard the Cassini spacecraft (the Cosmic Dust Analyzer) to analyze dust grains flying around Saturn. Over those 13 years, they collected only 163 grains that originated far beyond the planet’s environs. From the calculations it has thus emerged that the rings of Saturn have accumulated dust for only a few hundred million years.
Now “we know roughly how old the rings are, but that doesn’t solve the other problems,” notes Kempf. “For starters, we don’t yet know how these rings formed.”
Source: Ansa
I am a journalist with over 6 years of experience working in the news industry. I currently work as an author for Global Happenings, and my coverage focuses on Technology news. I have written for various publications, including Reuters, The New York Times and The Guardian.
