Saturn’s seven rings are much younger than the planet itself, concludes a paper that relied on data from the now-demolished Cassini spacecraft, which orbited the planet for 13 years.
While Saturn’s rings are like cosmic pearls – chunks of mostly water ice, the size of boulders and smaller – those pearls are slightly dirty and only getting dirtier. They collect the dust that flies through the solar system, at a certain rate. Scientists didn’t know what that rate was until Cassini pinned it down, which has helped scientists to date the rings.
