Saturn Will Lose Its Rings
Farewell Rings.
One of the most remarkable planets in our solar system Saturn will lose its rings. Though we will not be able to see this happen in our lifetime due to the event occurring in around 100 million years. Firstly lets talk about how Saturn got its rings, they were formed from comets, asteroids, ice, and pieces of crushed moon. More importantly why is this happening to Saturn’s rings? Saturn suffers from an issue astronomers know as “ring rain”, this is where Saturn’s water like substances are pulled into the planet’s atmosphere thus shrinking the rings. This event is happening at all times and every half hour Saturn pulls in enough water like substances to fill up an entire Olympic sized pool every half hour. Other factors we have to consider such as the orbit of Saturn which is around 30 years. During Saturn’s orbit around the sun the exposure of ultraviolet light makes the planet’s behave differently, It could possibly slow the decay of the rings or speed it up for us to know for sure we would have to wait.
Addition factors that would cause Saturn to lose its rings would be the Sun’s fierce heat and radiation melting the ice and causing more “ring rain”. Thus far it seems certain that Saturn will lose its rings although there is hope that the same or a similar event will happen to Saturn that will cause more rings to be formed for example a moon being crushed or a comet being launched into the rings.
RELATED STORIES:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/saturns-rings-are-slowly-disappearing-180972856/
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/03/saturn-losing-rings-nasa-moons/629391/
https://www.wionews.com/science/saturn-is-eating-its-own-rings-they-may-disappear-altogether-466925
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