When I was a kid, I had little names for every planet to help me remember them. Jupiter was “the big one,” Mars was “the really red one,” Uranus was “the funny one,” and Saturn was “the one with rings.” However, according to projections from NASA scientists, the ol’ titan has begun losing its rings, and they’re disappearing quickly, at least for a planet.
According to scientists, Saturn’s rings have been raining down onto the planet’s surface in chunks. Remember, the rings are just floating space rocks, they only look solid to us because there’s so many of them. Tiny meteoroids and UV radiation are knocking these rocks out of their orbit and shooting them down onto the planet or out into the vacuum. This phenomenon, coined the “ring rain,” was actually discovered back in the 80s, but estimates back then said it would take about 300 million years for all of the rocks to be knocked loose. However, based on data gathered from the Cassini aircraft that was launched at Saturn in 2017, the ring rain is actually even heavier than initially measured. Based on this data, scientists have made a new estimate: assuming the ring rain continues at its current pace, Saturn’s rings will be completely gone in only 100 million years.
Obviously, that seems like a long time to us, but remember that Saturn is estimated to be around 4.5 billion years old, so 100 million is a summer afternoon on a celestial scale. The rings themselves are estimated to only be 100-200 million years old themselves. All things considered, we got pretty lucky to see Saturn’s iconic look when it actually had an iconic look.
