August 18, 2024 • 5 mins
Short answer: Nope! As it turns out, Saturn's rings are fairly new, and they'll only be around a while longer. Relatively speaking. Learn how researchers discovered this in today's classic episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/saturns-rings-blip-in-time.htm
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren Vogelbomb here with another classic episode of the podcast
for you. In this one, we talk about Saturn's breathtaking rings,
how they formed, and why we're actually really lucky to
be around to see them, because they won't exist for
(00:22):
very long on the cosmic scale.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hey brain Stuff, Lauren vogelbomb Here, humanity exists at a
very special time in our Solar System's history, the era
of Saturn's rings. In the next one hundred million years,
Saturn's rings will completely disappear, and planetary scientists have realized
that it acquired those rings only very recently. During the
Cassini mission's final months at Saturn, the NASA spacecraft carried
(00:47):
out a series of daring orbits through the space between
the planet's cloud tops and innermost edge of its rings.
This so called Grand Finale signaled that the end was
nigh for the probe, and on September fifteenth to tenty seventeen,
it burned up in the gas giant's atmosphere, bringing a
spectacular thirteen years of science in Saturn's orbit to a
poignant close. The spacecraft was low on fuel and to
(01:11):
avoid an accidental crash into one of Saturn's potentially habitable moons.
NASA had long ago decided that the best way to
dispose of the mission was to burn it up in
Saturn's upper atmosphere. The agency wanted to avoid earthly contamination
on these pristine alien environments. Before its fiery death, however,
Cassini took unprecedented measurements of the mysterious ring gap region
to reveal some surprising ring dynamics. Though mission scientists expected
(01:36):
to detect some wispy elemental gases in this empty region,
Cassini's particle instrumentation found a smorgas board of elements and
molecules raining from the rings down to the planet's atmosphere.
They estimated around ten tons of material that's about nine
thousand kilos is falling onto Saturn from the rings per second.
That means that Saturn's rings will eventually disappear and will
(01:58):
have existed only for a short blip of s Saturn's
four billion year life span. So far, researchers have used
Cassini's ring dives to estimate when Saturn acquired its famous rings.
When Cassini zipped through Saturn's ring plane. Mission managers allowed
the planet, its rings and moons to gravitationally tug at
these speeding spacecraft. These extremely slight tugs resulted in tiny
(02:20):
changes in the probe's trajectory which could be precisely measured.
Those changes allowed scientists, too, for the first time, make
a very good measurement of how much mass is holed
up in Saturn's rings after analyzing the final set of orbits. However,
the extent to which Cassini's trajectory was deflected initially didn't
make sense. It didn't match the predictions by theoretical models.
(02:41):
It turned out the Cassini's motion was being additionally altered
by massive flows of material at Saturn's equator, inside its
thick atmosphere about six thousand miles or nearly ten thousand
kilometers deep. These massive flows are moving about four percent
slower than the visible upper atmospheric clouds, causing a gravitational
anomaly that was and predicted Cassini projects. Scientist Linda Spilker
(03:03):
of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement, the
discovery of deeply rotating layers is a surprising revelation about
the internal structure of the planet. The question is what
causes the more rapidly rotating part of the atmosphere to
go so deep, and what does that tell us about
Saturn's interior. However, with this anomaly partially explained, scientists were
free to measure the gravitational influence of Saturn's rings and
(03:26):
thus measure their mass. The researchers estimate that the total
mass of Saturn's rings is approximately forty percent that of
Saturn's moon Mimas. Considering Mimas is two thousand times smaller
than Earth's moon, there certainly isn't a lot of material
in Saturn's rings. Scientists had previously relied on density waves
or ripples through the rings caused by the motion of
these sixty two moons in Saturn's orbit to estimate ring mass.
(03:50):
Although these estimates were also low, astronomers have always assumed
there was some kind of hidden mass in large blocks
of material that remained unseen. Now, at the precision measurements
made by Cassini's final orbits, we know that there is
no hidden mass. The lower the mass of the rings,
the younger they are, and because they are predominantly made
of ice, if they were older, the ring material would
(04:11):
have become contaminated by interplanetary debris, dulling them, and Saturn's rings,
as we're acutely aware, are beautifully bright. Previous estimates of
ring age have been far ranging from four point five
billion years the leftovers of when Saturn itself was forming,
to a few tens of million years, But with this
new finding in hand, it looks like the rings are
very young, formed less than one hundred million years ago
(04:34):
and perhaps as recently as ten million years ago. Where
the rings came from remains more of a mystery. It's
possible that an icy object from the Kuiper Belt or
an arrant comet became entwined in Saturn's gravitational field and
succumbed to the planet's powerful tides, was ripped apart and
eventually ground down to create the banded rings we know
and love today. Although Saturn's rings will be gone in
(04:55):
a hundred million years, it doesn't mean that our Solar
systems ringed planet days are gone forever. If Saturn can
create them, there's little reason why Jupiter, Neptune, or Uranus
can't shred and nice the object create another bright ringed planet.
Display in the distant future.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Today's episode is based on the article Saturn's Rings will
exist for just a blippin time on how stuffworks dot Com,
written by Ian O'Neill. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio
in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com and is produced
by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren Vogelbomb here with another classic episode of the podcast
for you. In this one, we talk about Saturn's breathtaking rings,
how they formed, and why we're actually really lucky to
be around to see them, because they won't exist for
(00:22):
very long on the cosmic scale.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hey brain Stuff, Lauren vogelbomb Here, humanity exists at a
very special time in our Solar System's history, the era
of Saturn's rings. In the next one hundred million years,
Saturn's rings will completely disappear, and planetary scientists have realized
that it acquired those rings only very recently. During the
Cassini mission's final months at Saturn, the NASA spacecraft carried
(00:47):
out a series of daring orbits through the space between
the planet's cloud tops and innermost edge of its rings.
This so called Grand Finale signaled that the end was
nigh for the probe, and on September fifteenth to tenty seventeen,
it burned up in the gas giant's atmosphere, bringing a
spectacular thirteen years of science in Saturn's orbit to a
poignant close. The spacecraft was low on fuel and to
(01:11):
avoid an accidental crash into one of Saturn's potentially habitable moons.
NASA had long ago decided that the best way to
dispose of the mission was to burn it up in
Saturn's upper atmosphere. The agency wanted to avoid earthly contamination
on these pristine alien environments. Before its fiery death, however,
Cassini took unprecedented measurements of the mysterious ring gap region
to reveal some surprising ring dynamics. Though mission scientists expected
(01:36):
to detect some wispy elemental gases in this empty region,
Cassini's particle instrumentation found a smorgas board of elements and
molecules raining from the rings down to the planet's atmosphere.
They estimated around ten tons of material that's about nine
thousand kilos is falling onto Saturn from the rings per second.
That means that Saturn's rings will eventually disappear and will
(01:58):
have existed only for a short blip of s Saturn's
four billion year life span. So far, researchers have used
Cassini's ring dives to estimate when Saturn acquired its famous rings.
When Cassini zipped through Saturn's ring plane. Mission managers allowed
the planet, its rings and moons to gravitationally tug at
these speeding spacecraft. These extremely slight tugs resulted in tiny
(02:20):
changes in the probe's trajectory which could be precisely measured.
Those changes allowed scientists, too, for the first time, make
a very good measurement of how much mass is holed
up in Saturn's rings after analyzing the final set of orbits. However,
the extent to which Cassini's trajectory was deflected initially didn't
make sense. It didn't match the predictions by theoretical models.
(02:41):
It turned out the Cassini's motion was being additionally altered
by massive flows of material at Saturn's equator, inside its
thick atmosphere about six thousand miles or nearly ten thousand
kilometers deep. These massive flows are moving about four percent
slower than the visible upper atmospheric clouds, causing a gravitational
anomaly that was and predicted Cassini projects. Scientist Linda Spilker
(03:03):
of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement, the
discovery of deeply rotating layers is a surprising revelation about
the internal structure of the planet. The question is what
causes the more rapidly rotating part of the atmosphere to
go so deep, and what does that tell us about
Saturn's interior. However, with this anomaly partially explained, scientists were
free to measure the gravitational influence of Saturn's rings and
(03:26):
thus measure their mass. The researchers estimate that the total
mass of Saturn's rings is approximately forty percent that of
Saturn's moon Mimas. Considering Mimas is two thousand times smaller
than Earth's moon, there certainly isn't a lot of material
in Saturn's rings. Scientists had previously relied on density waves
or ripples through the rings caused by the motion of
these sixty two moons in Saturn's orbit to estimate ring mass.
(03:50):
Although these estimates were also low, astronomers have always assumed
there was some kind of hidden mass in large blocks
of material that remained unseen. Now, at the precision measurements
made by Cassini's final orbits, we know that there is
no hidden mass. The lower the mass of the rings,
the younger they are, and because they are predominantly made
of ice, if they were older, the ring material would
(04:11):
have become contaminated by interplanetary debris, dulling them, and Saturn's rings,
as we're acutely aware, are beautifully bright. Previous estimates of
ring age have been far ranging from four point five
billion years the leftovers of when Saturn itself was forming,
to a few tens of million years, But with this
new finding in hand, it looks like the rings are
very young, formed less than one hundred million years ago
(04:34):
and perhaps as recently as ten million years ago. Where
the rings came from remains more of a mystery. It's
possible that an icy object from the Kuiper Belt or
an arrant comet became entwined in Saturn's gravitational field and
succumbed to the planet's powerful tides, was ripped apart and
eventually ground down to create the banded rings we know
and love today. Although Saturn's rings will be gone in
(04:55):
a hundred million years, it doesn't mean that our Solar
systems ringed planet days are gone forever. If Saturn can
create them, there's little reason why Jupiter, Neptune, or Uranus
can't shred and nice the object create another bright ringed planet.
Display in the distant future.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Today's episode is based on the article Saturn's Rings will
exist for just a blippin time on how stuffworks dot Com,
written by Ian O'Neill. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio
in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com and is produced
by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
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