If you had to identify Saturn out of a crowd, you'd most likely
know it by its famous rings. They are our solar system's largest and brightest
rings. Extending over 280,000 kilometres from the planet and wide enough to fit
six Earths in a row. Saturn won't look like this for long now. Because its
rings are vanishing.
That's correct, Saturn's rings
are disappearing! And fast. Much quicker, in fact, than researchers had
anticipated. Saturn is now receiving 10,000 kg of ring rain each second. Fast
enough to fill an Olympic-sized pool in under 30 minutes.
This rain is made up of the
shattered fragments of Saturn's rings. Saturn's rings are largely made up of
ice and rock fragments. Which are constantly bombarded: some by UV light from
the Sun, while others by small meteoroids.
When the frozen particles
collide, they evaporate, generating charged water molecules that interact with
Saturn's magnetic field before falling into Saturn and burning up in the
atmosphere.
Ring rain has been known since
the 1980s, when NASA's Voyager spacecraft discovered enigmatic, dark bands that
turned out to be ring rain locked in Saturn's magnetic fields.
Researchers anticipated that
the rings will completely drain in 300 million years.
However, findings from NASA's
previous Cassini satellite paint a bleaker picture. Cassini managed to gain a
clearer look at the amount of ring dust showering on Saturn's equator before
its death plunge into Saturn in 2017.
And noticed that it was pouring
harder than expected. Scientists concluded that the rings had only 100 million
years left to live based on these improved measurements. It's difficult to
envision Saturn without rings right now.
However, throughout most of its
existence, the planet was as naked as Earth. While Saturn formed around 4.5
BILLION years ago, research shows that the rings are just 100-200 million years
old at most. That makes them younger than certain dinosaurs.
So, when you think about it,
we're really lucky to have been around to witness those spectacular rings. Now
our attempts to examine those rings led us to additional findings.
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