Saturn’s rings are very young
Data from Cassini’s last ring-diving orbits has now strengthened the hypothesis that Saturn’s rings formed very recently, just a few hundred million years ago.
Saturn acquired its jewels relatively late in life. If any astronomers had gazed at the sky in the time of the dinosaurs, they might have seen a bare and boring Saturn.
It was then that some sort of catastrophe struck the gas giant. Perhaps a stray comet or asteroid struck an icy moon, tossing its remnants into orbit. Or maybe the orbits of Saturn’s moons somehow shifted, and the resulting gravitational tug-of-war pulled a moon apart. However it happened, two new lines of evidence from Cassini make it clear that the rings were not around in the early days of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago, as scientists had long believed, says Jeff Cuzzi, a ring specialist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. “It rules out the primordial ring story,” Cuzzi says. “That’s what it looks like to me.”
At the moment there is no consensus on what might have caused the rings formation so recently.
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Data from Cassini’s last ring-diving orbits has now strengthened the hypothesis that Saturn’s rings formed very recently, just a few hundred million years ago.
Saturn acquired its jewels relatively late in life. If any astronomers had gazed at the sky in the time of the dinosaurs, they might have seen a bare and boring Saturn.
It was then that some sort of catastrophe struck the gas giant. Perhaps a stray comet or asteroid struck an icy moon, tossing its remnants into orbit. Or maybe the orbits of Saturn’s moons somehow shifted, and the resulting gravitational tug-of-war pulled a moon apart. However it happened, two new lines of evidence from Cassini make it clear that the rings were not around in the early days of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago, as scientists had long believed, says Jeff Cuzzi, a ring specialist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. “It rules out the primordial ring story,” Cuzzi says. “That’s what it looks like to me.”
At the moment there is no consensus on what might have caused the rings formation so recently.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in the past two weeks has the mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuses to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
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c/o Robert Zimmerman
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Cortaro, AZ 85652
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And why is there a tenuous ring about Jupiter? And a tenuous PARTIAL ring about Uranus? And no relic of such a thing about the Earth, which in theory has had a couple of noteworthy collisions of its own with celestial objects?
I.e., we could use a more general explanation,
Funny how they use collisions to solve problems that end up creating other problems. Not so funny is how they say it happened with such authority (when speaking to us simple folk.)
Oh, I dunno. My thought is, likely there was quite a bit of debris about the earth back around the time the moon was being put together, but the solar wind and light pressure shoved off the lighter stuff. Stronger solar wind and light pressure might explain why nothing lingered around Mercury and Venus long enough to coalesce into moons. I think there are plausible explanations for moon formation and rings and no doubt other interesting phenomena we just haven’t seen yet.
But I’m not an Official Planetary Scientist, just this guy mumbling to himself and hand waving. I’d really like to see somebody tackle this stuff more rigorously. Other hand … I’m complaining about a lack of satisfactory explanations for things which NOBODY EVER IMAGINED for the first twenty years or so of my life, so it’s not as if we can argue “Astronomy has failed. Science is all wrong!”
Nah, it’s blissful to be alive and aware of the progress we’re making. HOSANNAH!