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The Return of Saturn's Spokes
CheshireCatCO writes "After more than a year in orbit around Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft has finally spotted 'spokes' in the rings. Spokes, large radial structures in the rings, where seen by the Voyager spacecraft and have remained difficult to fully explain. The reappearce of the spokes comes about two years earlier than many models predicted."
The rings aren't very solid; most of the material is believed to be ice crystals that are, at most, a few meters in diameter. And despite their apparent solidity from here, they're an awful lot of empty space.
Chances are pretty good that an asteroid would just sail right through the rings unimpeded. If it did hit something, it wouldn't be stopped. The inertia of the (small) body it hit would almost certainly be completely overcome by the incoming inertia of the asteroid. If it hit hard enough to break the asteroid apart, the result might look something like a shotgun blast, with a spray of asteroid chunks and a tiny bit of ring material continuing roughly along the same path the asteroid had been following. The 'hole' in the rings would almost certainly be filled within hours or days.
If the asteroid happened to be slow enough to be captured into orbit, and happened to be on the same plane as the rings, it could potentially join the ring system. Over time, it might be torn apart by tidal forces into small chunks and blend in with the rest of the material.
No matter what, it wouldn't just hit them and explode in place. The rings aren't nearly solid enough for that. It'd be like trying to stop a bullet with a sheet of Saran Wrap, perhaps with rice stuck to it.