[NASA/JPL] Saturn's icy rings are just a few hundred million years old.
Posted on 01/03/2018 8:45:08 AM PST by SunkenCiv
The first line of evidence comes from the mass of the rings. For years, many scientists leaned toward a large mass, greater than that of Saturn's moon Mimas, because of the opaque, dense appearance of Saturn's primary ring, the B ring. Enough grist to form a massive ring could have only been supplied billions of years ago, when the early solar system was chock full of planetesimals...
[Second] Iess leads Cassini's radio experiment team, which used tiny Doppler shifts in the spacecraft's radio signal to determine the mass of objects it orbited. When Cassini began threading the gap between Saturn and its rings during its last passes, the team could pick out the gravitational pull of the rings -- and hence their mass. "The central value is consistently 0.4 Mimas's mass," Iess said. If theories that link mass to age are correct, he added, "This is a clear indication that the rings did not form together with Saturn." ...
[Third] After 12 years of painstaking measurements and analysis, the Cosmic Dust Analyzer, a Cassini experiment that measures small particles, has pinned down the micrometeorite flux -- and it is "inconsistent with an old ring," says Sascha Kempf, a space physicist at the University of Colorado (CU) in Boulder who will present the results tomorrow. This flux, which runs about 10 times higher than thought prior to the Cassini, suggests a ring age of between 150 million to 300 million years, or even younger. "Our measurement is the most direct way you can measure it," Kempf adds. "There's not much you can do about it. It has to be young."
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencemag.org ...
[NASA/JPL] Saturn's icy rings are just a few hundred million years old.
But of course!
The planet HAD TO EXIST WAY BEFORE THE RINGS COULD BE ACQUIRED!.................
Moons of Saturn May Be Younger Than the Dinosaurs
Scientific Computing | March 28, 2016 | SETI Institute
Posted on 03/30/2016 3:39:17 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3415731/posts
Astronomy Picture of the Day — Saturn: Bright Tethys and Ancient Rings
NASA | September 16, 2012 | (see photo credit)
Posted on 09/16/2012 8:37:42 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2931920/posts
Cassini report: Saturn’s rings glint with water, may have birthed moon
March 28, 2013
By Amina Khan
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/28/science/la-sci-sn-saturn-cassini-water-ice-moons-rings-prometheus-20130328
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3001948/posts (deleted topic)
Scientists Find That Saturn’s Rotation Period Is A Puzzle
University of Iowa | June 28, 2004 | Gary Galluzzo and Don Gurnett
Posted on 01/13/2005 6:00:04 PM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1320410/posts
The Dark Side of the Rings of Uranus
Science Express | August 23, 2007 | Imke de Pater, H. B. Hammel, Mark R. Showalter, Marcos A. van Dam
Posted on 08/28/2007 10:57:52 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1887818/posts
The ever-changing rings of Uranus
A very special alignment between the Earth and Uranus give astronomers a new …
Chris Lee - Aug 22, 2007 7:19 pm UTC
https://arstechnica.com/science/2007/08/the-ever-changing-rings-of-uranus/
One set of rings to rule them all...
Thanks go out to fishtank, for posting the young Earth version of the actual science:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3619062/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2246116/posts
The rings are most likely the result of grabbing inbound comets as they fall down the Sun’s gravity well, then tearing them apart with its own gravity into smaller chunks.
Some rings are narrow and some are wide, suggesting different size comets for each ring.................
DUH!
It’s all the lost airline luggage.
It’s where all the socks lost in the dryer wind up — the Hozone Layer.
You mean Saturn’s gravity well, I believe.
The moons themselves are likely the source of the rings, and the rings also build back up into small moons.
The original moons may have been captured by Saturn, but Jupiter’s captures are all in retrograde, so...
Except for the outer ring. That’s made/replenished by Enceladus’s volcanoes.
Disagree...the rings come from the planets surface and atmosphere, IMO. Take a spongee ball or a ball with a smooth surface (not a fuzzy tennis ball), wet it, then spin it around real fast. You will notice the water tends to come off in the middle of the sphere. Similar thing!
But why would they fall into an orbit, rather than fall to the surface? And all in the same plane; the distance out and angle of attack would have to be perfect, repeatedly.
Good posts. It shows these scientists don’t have a clue.
Exactly...hence my opinion that they come from the planets surface/atmosphere. Saturn is made up of H & He. There is oxygen in the atmosphere and may be the (porous) rocks in the rings combine the Hydrogen and oxygen to create H20 which freezes.
Actually, it doesn't show any such thing..
You all remember the train of bolids that rained down on Jupiter a few years ago? Could a train of objects come through the solar system that resulted in the great strikes of the Permian extinction event, and/or the death of the dinosaurs event which passed by close enough to Saturn or other planets to strike and kick up “dust” resulting in rings?? The Permian event falls within the age range mentioned, and since they say the rings could be newer, then it could also include the dinosaur event. Of course, possible similar events are possible that did not land on earth.
A giant wave of debris from a relatively nearby supernova, maybe.
The article suggests an asteroid or comet collision with one of Saturn’s moons.
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