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Saturn's Rings Are Ancient
gardenermike writes "Analysis of data from the Cassini probe suggests that Saturn's rings may be billions of years old, rather than the previously surmised millions. Previous research suggested that the rings were young, because of the lack of dark dust accumulation on their surfaces. However, the latest data suggests that the ring surfaces are even younger than previously thought, meaning, ironically, that the rings themselves are much older: they are not static enough to collect dust, but rather are continuously recycling material, with clumps continuously forming and disintegrating."
So that makes the rings themselves older. Uh huh.
At least this article didn't try and claim the rings are as old as the universe, like some others have. The article itself has been corrected, but the comments towards the end summarise the "insight" of the original article just fine :)
Perhaps they are missing the obvious with their scientific hubris. They will find out just how long a billion years is - their first week in hell .
I know I'm going to get killed for this, but...are you sure this story wasn't about Uranus rather than Saturn?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
The Monolith cleans up the rock regularly. Thats why there is no dust on them.
Seriously though, wouldn't the solar winds have any role in this.
I, for one, welcome our self cleaning and replicating Ancient overlords!!
So, we've found the home of the Ancients, and it was in our own solar system the whole time! Who would've thunk?
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Just because there is evidence that rings could be ancient, doesn't mean that they are. They could still go through this recycling process and still be formed by cometary impacts at a time later than the planetary formation phase.
Might be slightly redundant but can anyone tell me how scientists interpret the UV data from Cassini to determine the age of the rings?
Saturn's rings smell like licorice, according to the probe. This comes as a shock, since the scientific consensus has been that they'd smell almost precisely like a wet dog.
Overwhelming majority of features in the solar system are at least a billion years old. Anything younger should have obvious signs of recent formation. For the Rings of Saturn, we would expect to see some rocks still settling into circular orbit, remainder of the disintegrating satellite or at least markedly non-uniform size of composing rocks. So how did the scientists come up with this unlikely hypothesis of the rings having just formed by astronomical time scale in the first place? Even (primitive) life on Earth probably existing for millions of years.
1. Rings are as I understand it in general unstable or were thought to be so, given a relatively short amount of time (millions of years for large planets) they will break up.
2. Saturn's rings have particle ranging from mm to many meters in size.
3. You are complaining of a million years being short yet at the same time expect us to see changes that would take millions of years to happen? Are you drunk or simply insane.
4. Life on earth is billions of years old, our own primate ancestors were around millions of years ago.
5. You know fuck this, you're a bloody arm-chair physicist who knows jack shit, can't even think with the smallest amount of rationality and lacks the intelligence to comprehend either of those. Your own infinitesimal ego needs constant life support to even exist and so your are forced to delude yourself into believing you know better than those who spend their lifetimes on a subject.
(click the link for more great examples of Kevin Hovind's logic and reasoning)
just a screen shot of Saturn's rings i posted in a diff. forum
http://img181.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc37&image=55459_satring_122_37lo.jpg
the image is 1024x718
"I don't pitch OpenSUSE Linux to my friends, i let Microsoft do it for me
...Those scientists praised God and His Divine work.
Because, you know, they were American scientists.
Oh wait, sorry, wrong decade. Forget I even mentioned it.
I'm not an astrophysicist, but I would encourage you to perhaps read up on some scientific papers. Or make an interview appointment with some professor at a university or a physicist who works at some kind of museum/lab (assuming they're willing to answer your questions).
However, your response is not very helpful - it's always easy to go, "aha, that's obvious - of course it works that way.", after scientific evidence has been found for a new hypothesis. But keep in mind this hypothesis could still be disproved. Futhermore, there's plenty of hypothesis that were completely counter-intuitive (at least from the knowledge at the time) and yet was completely right (quantum mechanics, relativity, etc).
So remember, as always, hypothesis first, observations second, then determining whether or not your hypothesis is correct. Even if scientists followed your line of reasoning, it wasn't worth anything if all the evidence they had to date supported another theory.
A good way to think of that, is an great example of this kind of dangerous reasoning that happens with evolutionary psychology (from my PSYCH 101). Since evolutionary psychologists generally can't perform experiments to validate their hypothesis, contradicting hypothesis can be equally convincing (and equally wrong too) - forget the example they used in the textbook.
If the rings are 4.5 billion years old, what process is maintaining them? If they are just an aggregate of rocks in orbit around a planet, their orbits should have decayed and they should have fallen into Saturn about 4.49 billion years ago. Obviously something completely out of the realm of our current understanding is going on.
Who's worse, the people who don't understand and therefore misuse the word irony, or the the people who don't understand and then call every use of the word irony they see incorrect? I'm not sure what these taggers THINK irony means, but "However, the latest data suggests that the ring surfaces are even younger than previously thought, meaning, ironically, that the rings themselves are much older" is a perfect example of it.
Property is theft.
Why would God make something appear so old, when it is clear he made it 6000 years ago?
There are many things in the solar system that are younger than 4.55 Gyr; a lot of asteroids, for example, are the results of more recent breakups. You have impact craters and other geologic features on practically all bodies. Honestly, assuming that anything you look at is primordial is a pretty daft assumption unless you can make *some* argument as to why it should be.
As for Saturn's rings, a modicum of research would tell you that there are both dynamical reasons to think that rings are younger (models say that they should grind down to dust relatively fast) as well as observational evidence: the amount of meteoric dust that they've accumulated is smaller than should be there if they were as old as the planet itself. In fact, had you read the article, you would have learned that.
I rather doubt the solar wind plays much role in "cleaning" up any dust here.
The mechanisms suggested here don't appear to be so much like a massive fan or a Cosmic Roomba but rather as a VERY LARGE agitator.
The research isn't necessarily suggesting the rings are ancient. It's saying our reasons for thinking the rings are young aren't as sound anymore. Basically, up until recently for a variety of reasons we thought the rings were young because our understanding led us to the belief that these rings ought to collapse rather soon (either into Saturn or its moons).
But now we're thinking there are forces which clump and forces which stir up. These work together more or less to recycle the material of the rings themselves. This leads researchers to believe the rings aren't necessarily going to collapse any time soon and indeed may be far older than we originally thought.
If "birth" of an apple is when it falls from a tree and you see one dropping (but you didn't see it fall and you have no idea where the branch is), you conclude it's "young". You know it's going to hit the ground soon and you know no matter where the branch is, it's not that far up and the apple only goes down. However, if all of a sudden you see a geyser blow and shoot that apple back up again.. and again... and again... you start to realize you really don't have any idea when it first fell off the tree.
The rings are well within Saturn's magnetosphere, which protects them from the solar wind.