A new study from the University of Colorado Boulder and published in the journal Science Advances revealed the true age of Saturn’s famous rings. According to researchers, they are more than 400 million years old. That means they are much younger than their planet, which formed about 4.5 billion years ago.
In 1610, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei first observed Saturn’s rings through a telescope. According to NASA studies, the rings are formed by pieces of ice or rocks covered with ice (some the size of a bus) that fall on the planet due to its strong gravity, and orbit it like a satellite.
The calculation of the age of the rings was possible through samples collected by the Cosmic Dust Analyzer aboard NASA’s latest Cassini spacecraft. “We know roughly how old the rings are, but that doesn’t solve any of our other problems,” said Sascha Kempf, study leader. “We still don’t know how these rings formed in the first place”completed.
Despite not knowing their origin, the study points out that Saturn’s rings are a new phenomenon, since they appeared in a period equivalent to the blink of an eye in cosmic terms. And just as they appeared, they can disappear in a relatively short time. In previous research, NASA scientists reported that ring ice is slowly falling onto the planet. and could cause them to disappear completely in about 100 million years.
2023-05-20 01:51:50
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