Saturn’s Rings Are Surprisingly Young, Formed Less Than 100 Million Years Ago

Saturn’s rings are only about 100 million years old, meaning they formed long after the first dinosaurs and mammals walked the Earth.

In its last mission, the Cassini spacecraft of NASA plunged between Saturn and its rings, and gathered loads of valuable information needed to discover that Saturn’s rings are, in fact, only 10 to 100 million years old at most and these are younger compared to the age of Saturn. These maneuvers supported the scientists in determining the mass of Saturn’s outer structure and gain more information about the rings; the mass estimated is comparatively smaller, thus the reason researchers are yet to give the specific information explaining the origin of the rings; it is believed that they could be a result of a catastrophic occurrence such as an impact. According to the obtained data, Cassini helped scientists to determine details of the interior of Saturn, for instance, the depth at which it begins to rotate uniformly, and the size of Saturn’s core.

Exploring Saturn’s Rings

In NASA’s Cassini’s Grand Finale, the spaceship ventured into flying between Saturn and its rings capturing splendid information as to the perceived youthful age of the rings of Saturn. Analyzing the results of the most recent investigations, we can state that these rings were probably created during the last 100 million of years and, thus, are much younger than Saturn.

At first Cassini orbit in the outside the rings make it difficult for scientists to distinguish between the pull of the rings and that of the planet – an important ingredient to the calculation of the rings’ mass. Despite this, scientists theorized that mass of the ring could give them information needed for its age but, this endeavor was not precise despite the many attempts until the final phase of Cassini maneuvers.

When Cassini was in-between, the research team monitored the signal from the Cassini spacecraft back to the home station on Earth in order to determine the mass of Saturn without perturbing it by the rings. According to the study author Luciano Iess of Sapienza University of Rome it was important in establishing the rings low mass region.

The research also shows that the rings of Saturn are between ten to hundred million years younger than the rings’ satellite, the Saturn itself, which is about four billion years old. 5 billion years old. Iess added that there were suggestions from earlier VOYAGER and CASSINI data indicating that the rings did not originally belong to Saturn though now much stronger evidence exists only through the final missions maneuvers. “

Saturn’s Mysteries

These findings show the age of saturn’s rings but the origin of these rings is still unknown. “A collision loss seems the most probable scenario but there may be problems an a collision loss as well”, said Iess. He said, “The origin of the rings has to be looked at in terms of the Saturnian system’s dynamics: some scientists think that even Saturn’s ‘inner’ moons are comparatively recent and are moving outwards. ”

In addition to determining the age of the rings, Cassini’s flybys provided fresh knowledge to understanding the inside of Saturn. Stellar body of the planet is hydrogen and helium and it is characterized by the fact that its outer atmospheric shells rotate faster than the inner ones. With this new data, the researchers determined the difference as beginning roughly at approximately 5,592 to 6,214 miles (9,000 to 10,000 km) below the surface.

The study also gave insight into the composition of Saturn’s inner core, which contains dense material and weighs between 15 to 18 Earth masses, amounting to about 15% of Saturn’s total weight One reason Iess found out the size of the core would be useful is because it may give some formation history of the planet and its moons.