New research suggests that Saturn's rings will disappear in hundreds of millions of years

CTOnews.com Saturn's most iconic feature is its rings, and three studies published on the subject, based on data collected by NASA's Cassini mission, model Saturn's rings that will disappear in hundreds of millions of years.

Hundreds of millions of years is too long for humans to see such astronomical phenomena in our lifetime, but hundreds of millions of years is not too long on the cosmic time scale.

This idea was demonstrated in papers published in Science Advances on May 12 and Icarus on May 15, suggesting that Saturn's rings will disappear in a few hundred million years.

Saturn's rings are made up mostly of hundreds of millions of ice and rock fragments, known as the "interstellar dust belt." Saturn is eating up Saturn's orbiting rings, and its suction is sucking these particles into the upper atmosphere, eventually entering Saturn completely.

CTOnews.com attaches a link to the paper here, and interested users can click to read it.

reference

Large mass inflow rates in Saturn's rings due to ballistic transport and mass loading

Micrometeoroid infall onto Saturn's rings constrains their age to no more than a few hundred million years

Constraints on the initial mass, age and lifetime of Saturn's rings from viscous evolutions that include pollution and transport due to micrometeoroid bombardment