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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."
Maybe it's just me, but I thought the summary explained why they think that.
Maybe it's just me, but I thought the summary included false logic. The summary made no mention why a younger surface excluded the possibility that the rings were exactly the same age scientists previously thought they were. It only opens the door to the possibility of older rings.
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.
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.
I swear to it by everything I hold sacred: Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle were at that conference and I got to hang out with them a fair bit.
I am not surprised. Authors often write their own personal experiences into their works including events they have attended.
Pournelle directed me to a session I otherwise would have missed where several scientists presented papers that exposed Reagan's Star Wars initiative for the multi-billion dollar cash grab it was.
I am not old enough to have made my own determination at the time about the technical and strategic feasibility of SDI. However, even if it had been an unarguably sensible thing to spend significant resources on, the political process as practiced in the US then and now would have made it a cash grab in much the same way that all large military or scientific projects that I am aware of become cash grabs.