SATURN’S RINGS

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Context

Saturn's rings are much younger than scientists once thought, according to new research from Indiana University.
Researchers have pegged the planet Saturn’s rings’ age at no more than 400 million years old.

Saturn

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun, notable for having an intricate dazzling ring system.
It is the second-largest planet in the Solar System, and with 96% of the planet is made out of lightweight hydrogen.
Saturn is also the least dense planet in the Solar System.
Saturn has a magnetosphere with a strength comparable to Earth's, which can create aurora in the outer atmosphere.
Saturn is classified as a gas giant and has a rocky core (with a scorching temperature of 11,700 °C or 21,100 °F) surrounded by metallic hydrogen, an intermediate layer of liquid hydrogen and helium, and a gaseous outer atmosphere.
Inside the atmosphere are stacked cloud layers, made out of ammonia, water, and ammonium hydrosulfide ice.
Saturn rotates once around its axis in around 10.5 hours.
Saturn orbits one time around the Sun in 29.5 Earth years and is the second most massive planet in the Solar System, at 95 times the Earth's mass.
Saturn has 62known moons; the largest of these moons is Titan, which also has a dense hazy atmosphere.

Saturn’s atmosphere is filled with methane and ammonia. The ammonia crystals on Saturn swirl around the planet coloring it with a gold tint.
It has wind and rain, sand dunes, shorelines and changing seasons.
Saturn’s largest moon Titan has underground oceans giving it the potential to harbor life. It’s the only moon with a dense atmosphere. For example, it’s 50% thicker than Earth’s atmosphere containing mostly nitrogen with hydrocarbons. Titan has lakes and rivers. But it’s really cold – as cold as -180 °C.

Saturn’s Rings

The rings around Saturn is mostly made out of water ice particles, peppered with carbon and tholins.
Compared to Saturn's age of around 4.5 billion years, these rings are thought to be relatively new.
Saturn's rings are thought to be pieces of comets, asteroids, or shattered moons that broke up before they reached the planet, torn apart by Saturn's powerful gravity.
They are made of billions of small chunks of ice and rock coated with other materials such as dust.
They measure just tens of meters in thickness. Saturn’s rings system is divided into 7 groups.