Planetary scientists have pointed out that the ring around Saturn is not permanent, in fact it was formed “not too long ago” and it is gradually disappearing.
According to The Atlantic magazine, the rings around Saturn are undergoing a “ring rain” process, which causes the material in the rings to decrease every year, and eventually these rings will disappear.
And what is the annular rain? The report explains that both meteorites intruding into Saturn’s rings and radiation from the sun are disturbing the small dust grains that make up the rings and causing them to become electrically charged. Once charged, these particles are affected by Saturn’s magnetic field lines and begin to spiral along the magnetic field lines. Once these dust grains get too close to Saturn’s atmosphere, they will fall into Saturn’s atmosphere under the action of gravity and vaporize away. Astronomers call this process annular rain.
Planetary scientist James O’Donoghue of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) told The Atlantic that Saturn’s rings are thought to be an immutable landscape, but in fact from the chronological scale of astronomy , is a fleeting sight, “What we are seeing now is the most spectacular period of Saturn’s rings.”
Astronomers have discovered that Saturn’s rings are a cosmologically recent sight. According to data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, Saturn’s rings were formed 100 million to 100 million years ago. At that time, there was a period of massive dinosaur activity on the earth. So from the perspective of the cosmological timeline, Saturn’s rings were formed “not too long ago”.
Just like everything in the human world is constantly changing, the celestial bodies in the universe seem to be “unchanged” from the perspective of people’s time, but in fact they are also changing regularly. In any field, the so-called “forever” is only a relative concept.
Scientists still don’t know exactly how Saturn’s rings form. One of the most popular theoretical conjectures is that some moons used to be too close to Saturn and were torn to pieces and floated around it. Scientists estimate that Saturn’s rings will disappear completely in about 300 million years. “It’s a shame,” O’Donoghue said. “However, we’ve been fortunate to have seen the most beautiful view of Saturn’s rings in the age of humanity.”