Photo: NASA/Public Domain
After being long debated by scientists, new research has revealed that Saturn's rings are a lot younger than once believed.
Dr Nick Rattenbury of University of Auckland's department of physics told Nights there had been two ideas about how Saturn got its rings.
One theory was that the rings were made of a material that was around when all planets in the solar system formed, with the rings forming from "leftover bits and pieces" that hung around Saturn.
The other theory was that the rings formed much later by an object being captured by the planet and then being hit by other objects, breaking it into tiny bits.
"It's more likely that Saturn has collected this material well after Saturn formed," Rattenbury said.
"Most of Saturn's life, 90 percent of Saturn's life, it has been without a ring system and it's only been fairly recently, relatively recently, let's say since 400 million years ago, that Saturn had a ring system, so the evidence is pointing us towards the second of those two theories, that Saturn's rings are relatively new as opposed to being ancient."
Rattenbury said Saturn's rings were mostly made up of water ice and although they looked solid from Earth through a telescope, they were not.
Saturn's rings are made up of tiny particles, mainly comprised of water ice. Photo: flickr/ Judy Schmidt
Instead, the rings were made up of "billions and billions and billions of tiny little particles", mainly comprised of water ice.
Each particle was like a "little moon independently orbitting around Saturn".
And those rings? They were not expected to stay with Saturn forever.
Rattenbury said there were processes going on all the time which were working to erode the rings.
Dr Nick Rattenbury of University of Auckland's department of physics. Photo: RNZ/Claire Concannon
"There are other processes as well where radiation is striking these little particles and causing them to get an electric charge and then they spiral off down the magnetic field into Saturn's atmosphere as well so there are processes at work which are slowly pleating Saturn's rings.
"The rate of loss is higher than rate of replenishment so that means overtime, Saturn's rings will eventually disappear."
Saturn was not the only planet in the solar system with rings - although its were the most noticeable.
"Saturn has this glorious, extensive ring system of all these little ice particles. The other planets do have similar ring systems although much, much less dense, much, much fainter and we don't see them quite so easily until we get up close."
