Saturn is losing its rings at ‘worst-case-scenario’ rate, warns NASA

New research has revealed that the most distinguishable planet of our Solar System, Saturn, is losing its iconic rings and that too at a ‘worst-case-scenario’ rate.

According to a research by NASA scientists, Saturn, the ringed-planet of our Solar System, might be ring-less soon enough as the planet is losing its rings at a startling rate.

NASA explained that though we have always known Saturn because of its rings, these are themselves very fairly young (estimated to be less than 100 million years old) and are considered to be a ‘new’ feature of the planet, which might not also stick around for a long time.

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The rings are made up mostly of frozen water with some rock and dust mixed in, and are actively dumping huge quantity of ice onto the planet constantly, reported BGR. A recent paper suggested that around 22,000 pounds of material falls from the rings every single second and over time, that rain will leave the rings entirely dry.

The particles that make up the rings are being bombarded by Sun’s radiation and clouds of plasma from impacts of space rocks. Because of these, the particles gets caught up in Saturn’s magnetic field and then pulled down towards the planet by gravity.

“The rings are being pulled into Saturn by gravity as a dusty rain of ice particles under the influence of Saturn’s magnetic field,” said NASA.

As estimated by NASA, the incredible amount of Saturn’s ‘ring rain’ could mean that the entire ring system will be gone within 300 million years. But, adding NASA’s Cassini mission’s data about the rings indicate that the rings have less than 100 million years to live only.

This ‘ring rain’ time period is believed to be faster than expected by the researchers. “This is relatively short, compared to Saturn’s age of over 4 billion years,” said NASA’s researcher James O’Donoghue.

“We are lucky to be around to see Saturn’s ring system, which appears to be in the middle of its lifetime. However, if rings are temporary, perhaps we just missed out on seeing giant ring systems of Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, which have only thin ringlets today!” he added.