Saturn’s rings are much younger in age than the planet itself

Saturn’s rings are much younger than the planet itself, according to a study published in the journal Science Advances.

According to the study, led by physicist Sasha Kempf of the University of Colorado Boulder, the age of Saturn’s rings is determined to be no more than 400 million years, while Saturn itself is about 4.5 billion years old. The researchers came to this conclusion by studying the dust layer in the rings.

Over a 13-year period, from 2004 to 2017, the team used an instrument called the Cosmic Dust Analyzer on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft to analyze dust grains flying around Saturn. They collected just 163 grains that had come from beyond the planet’s close neighborhood. Based on their calculations of this material, Saturn’s rings probably only accumulate dust for a few hundred million years.

Saturn has seven rings made up of countless chunks of ice. For most of the 20th century, scientists thought the rings formed at the same time as Saturn. Cassini provided the opportunity to determine the age of Saturn’s rings. The spacecraft first reached Saturn in 2004 and collected data until it crashed in 2017. Scientists have designed and built a much more sophisticated dust analyzer for NASA’s upcoming ‘Europa Clipper’ mission scheduled to launch in 2024 .

In a previous study, NASA scientists reported that the rings are eroding and could disappear completely in another 100 million years. However, how the rings formed in the first place remains a question. Some scientists, for example, have theorized that Saturn’s rings may have formed when the planet’s gravity ripped apart one of its moons.