As reported by The Sun, Thursday (30/3/2022), the process of destruction has been revealed by astronomers to The Atlantic magazine.
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The ring is said to be in a state of ‘disruption’, being pulled towards Saturn by gravity and eventually going to vaporize. An estimated 10 tons of ‘ring material’ fell on Saturn.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has studied Saturn’s rings extensively through the Cassini spacecraft mission.
Through the current rate of decline, the entire ring system is expected to disappear about 300 million years from now. But NASA informs that there will likely be less than 100 years to ‘live’.
Meanwhile, the disappearance of Saturn’s rings, scientists suspect this ring rain since the first photos from Voyager in the 1980s hinted at this process.
Then, in recent years, the Cassini mission confirmed that this ring rain actually occurred.
And, a recent NASA study using the Keck telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii even shows how severe the ring rain is.
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