Stargazing is a wonderful and awe-inspiring activity as it allows you to observe and appreciate the beauty of the night sky, which is ever-changing. Be it the meteor showers, the full moon, comets or the eclipses, the night sky can be a treat for all the celestial lovers.
However, the experience gets even better if you happen to observe the same through a telescope. The shinning myriads of stars, the galaxies, everything seem to be so dreamy and when it comes to the planets, Saturn is one of the most gasp-inducing planet when viewed through a telescope. Why?
Well, of course, for its beautiful rings that make the sixth planet of the solar system a celestial marvel. Saturn has long fascinated astronomers and casual stargazers alike as those shimmering halos screams of mystery. Scientists have revealed innumerable theories about the origin of Saturn’s rings which almost peered into a time when dinosaurs roamed on our planet.
Saturn’s Rings Always Intreaguing
Keeping the point of origin aside, the age of Saturn’s rings has long been controversial. While most of the 20th century scientists assumed that the shimmering Saturn rings formed along with the planet about 4.5 billion years ago from the icy rubble left in orbit around it after the birth of the solar system, others suggested the Saturn’s rings are relatively young, perhaps originating after Saturn’s gravitational pull tore apart a comet or an icy moon.
This is because, when NASA’s Cassini spacecraft visited Saturn in 2004, it found that the rings appeared remarkably free of contamination from small space rocks, known as cosmic dust. This pristine appearance indicated they were far younger, with an estimate in 2023 placing them at between 100 and 400 million years old.
The images presented by Cassini showed no evidence of any darkening of the rings by impacting micrometeoroids, a type of space rock particles which are smaller than a grain of sand, prompting scientists to conclude the rings formed long after the planet.
Iconic Rings as Old as the Planet?
Now, new research, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, claims that Saturn’s rings may be older than they look, possibly as old as the planet. A Japanese-led team of scientists from the Institute of Science Tokyo suggested yet again that instead of being a youthful 400 million years old as commonly thought, the iconic rings could be around 4.5 billion years old just like the planet.
This new group of scientists stated that Saturn’s rings may be pristine because they are dirt-resistant and not because they are young.
Scientist Ryuki Hyodo and his team used computer modelling to demonstrate how the micrometeoroids vaporize once slamming into the rings, with little if any dark and dirty residue left behind. The team found that the resulting charged particles get sucked toward Saturn or out into space, keeping the rings spotless and challenging the baby rings theory.
Hyodo said it’s possible that the rings of the planet could be somewhere between the two extreme ages—around the halfway mark of 2.25 billion years old. But the solar system was much more chaotic during its formative years with large planetary-type objects migrating and interacting all over the place, just the sort of scenario that would be conducive to producing Saturn’s rings.
In an email, Hyodo said, “Considering the solar system’s evolutionary history, it’s more likely that the rings formed closer to” Saturn’s earliest times.
