Saturn's Rings Are Disappearing At a 'Worst-Case Scenario' Rate, NASA Says (usatoday.com)

A new study published in the journal Icarus found that Saturn is losing its signature rings at a "worst-case scenario" rate, and the bands could disappear completely within 100 million years. USA Today reports: The rings are being pulled into the planet "by gravity as a dusty rain of ice particles under the influence of Saturn's magnetic field," NASA said. The phenomenon is called "ring rain," and it drains enough water from rings to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool every 30 minutes, said James O'Donoghue of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "From this alone, the entire ring system will be gone in 300 million years," O'Donoghue said in a statement. "But add to this the Cassini-spacecraft measured ring-material detected falling into Saturn's equator, and the rings have less than 100 million years to live. We are lucky to be around to see Saturn's ring system, which appears to be in the middle of its lifetime."

Comments

Re:And 30% of Americans blame this on ...

[Ambvai]

Global warming?

Here's what we'll do

[Kohath]

We'll build bid, fat, beautiful new rings. They'll go up so fast your head will spin!

And Enceladus will pay for it!

But that's good news, isn't it?

[93 Escort Wagon]

It means the Ace Rimmers across the multitudinous universes are living longer, on average - so the orbital decay of their coffins is happening more frequently than new coffins are arriving.

Re:so, contrary to theory...

[ByteSlicer]

accretion disks DO NOT condense into discrete well-defined orbital bodies like planets (or in this case, moons)

Planetary rings are not accretion disks. So your statement is already wrong from the first two words. Even so, there is evidence that some of Saturn's moons were formed partially out of condensed ring material.

the Big Bang theory as a simple explanation of everything we see.

The Big Bang theory has little to do with ring mechanics. Maxwell already had a comprehensive model of how the rings worked (based on Newtonian physics) 70 years before Lemaitre posed the idea of a Big Bang.

This is why we can't have nice things.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. You want to know what is truly to blame for people willfully ignoring climate change? Science journalism. When I see articles like this, that talk about an interesting observation of an astronomical phenomenon in the same way that the National Emergency Broadcasting System talks about impending thermonuclear annihilation, it makes me jaded to articles about things that actually affect me or more importantly, things that I affect. It isn't the fault nor really the responsibility of scientists to prevent their discoveries from falling in the hands of hacks, but it is BeauHD's fucking job to keep clickbait bullshit off the front page of Slashdot.

Worst case scenario??

[Potor]

What does this even mean, in this context?

I mean, apart from external realities causing science to lose it characteristic dispassion?

Re: Will be dead in less than 50

[jd]

Did anyone ask you to be?

Since when was astronomy or astrophysics about your feelings?

Not bad...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Given that the company closed in 2008 and it is legally bound to provide spare parts only till 2018, it is really surprising its piston rings are going to last for 100 million years....

Wait... it's not that Saturn right...?

Re:And 30% of Americans blame this on ...

[GrumpySteen]

At what point in your thought process did you think "slashdot will surely understand this better if I use a sports-based metaphor"?

Here are the real answers, the actual results

[raymorris]

Here are the actual answers from 48 people:

• The sun is burning hotter and as the sun orbits closer it could be causing the rings to fade.
• The sun is causing the ice within the rings to melt and fall back down to the planet.
• energy burning out
• dust disipates
• Saturn's gravity is not enough to hold them
• gas vapor
• Probably global warming.
• The chaging atmosphere
• As the planet gets older and losses mass the gravitational pull is decreasing which is causing it to lose debris on the outer portion of it's rings and it's not able to be replaced with the decreased gravitational pull.
• I do not know
• I think that the dust and particles that the rings are made up of are slowly either drifting away into space, or disintegrating into nothing as the years go by.
• I think it could have to do with having more space debris coming into the galaxy. This could be slowly taking out parts of the rings as time goes on.
• New rings are forming making the current ones dissapear, eventualy the rings will be bigger.
• gravity is making them spin away
• The asteroids are slowly getting pulled away by the gravity of the sun
• The planet is several billions of years old. That has to be some wear and tear on it. Planets do not have an indefinite lifespan.
• Donald Trump's hair spray
• The gravatational pull of Saturn is slowly drawing the material of the rings to the planets surface.
• moisture or lack thereof
• Changes in atmosphere on Saturn
• It could be a natural process that is meant to happen and we just don't understand.
• Maybe it is getting closer to the sun which is causing the rings to disintegrate. The rings are misty and not made of anything of substance so at any sign or resistance, they will falter.
• The lost could be due to constant rotation of the ring itself.
• My guess is that the rings are gas and the gas is burning off or dissipating, just as a natural process.
• The sun is too powerful
• The water in the rings are dissipating.
• They aren't disappearing it just appears they are due to Saturn's rings angle compared to the earth making most telescopes unable to see the rings.
• Globalization is only reason
• What I think could be causing the rings to slowly be lost is due to gravity pulling the rings closer to Saturn and in turn, the rings are disappearing.
• just a guess: i would say that the cause is explained by natural science; that they are disappearing as a natural act which has nothing to do with human activity. in other words, i don't think there is any "visible evidence" that could answer why the rings are disappearing. it's just part of nature.
• It could be from the objects forming the rings breaking down into smaller pieces due to collisions with other objects thus causing the rings to become less significant over time. It could also be from those same objects exiting their orbit around Saturn caused by Saturn's gravitational pull, either pulling the objects inwards towards the planet or causing a bit of a boomerang effect if the orbit of the object is irregular.
• Because of our thoughts
• meteorites
• dissipation of gases
• The rings are being pulled into Saturn by gravity as a dusty rain of ice particles under the influence of Saturn's magnetic field
• natural decay
• the gravitational pull of Jupiter and Saturn
• They are melting and leaving the gravitational pull of Saturn.
• There is an increase in carbon dioxide
• the air in the ozone could be one of the reasons
• The vacuum of space is pulling it apart.
• the innermost rings would disappear first as they rain onto the planet. ... When this happens, the particles can feel the pull of Saturn's magnetic field, which curves inward toward the planet at Saturn's rings
• The planet is drifting away from the sun and the gravity on the planet is going down.
• Because of