Until now astronomers thought that the rings around Saturn were young and were formed only a 100 million years ago. Recently, on December 13th, scientists discovered that Saturn's rings were formed in the dinosaur age. The orbiting international Cassini spacecraft found evidence that the rings exited about 4.5 billion years ago! That's about the same time that the sun and other planets were formed. The data also showed evidence that the ring particles were constantly shattering and regrouping to form new rings. In addition, Saturn’s ring system consists of seven major rings and hundreds of small ones that are mostly made out of orbiting ice and dust. The theory that Saturn’s rings may be a permanent feature of Saturn was based on observations by the ultraviolet spectrograph on Cassini. The reason for scientists being so interested in studying the rings is because they are the disk of gas and dust that initially enveloped the sun and learning about them could lead to many new theories about the formation of the planets. In my opinion, Saturn’s rings have been there for so long and just like the sun they will eventually go away somehow.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/12/13/saturn-rings.html?dcitc=w19-502-ak-0000
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/12/13/saturn-rings.html?dcitc=w19-502-ak-0000
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