I read somewhere that they're temporary, but I don't know how long it will take them to go away....
2007-05-01 09:59:29 · 8 answers · asked by Skepticat 6 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
Saturn's rings are very dynamic. It was thought that the material should, eventually, clump together and form a small rocky-bundled moon, while the rest of them would lose orbital velocity through friction & fall into Saturn... recently, and thanks to observations by the Voyager and Cassini probes, we've discovered not only the complexity of the rings, but several reasons why they seem to persist - including 'sheparding' moons, which keep particles of the rings within a certain orbit, and the thinness of the rings - 99% of the material is within a disk only 12 to 50 miles thick, but 10,000 miles wide. While they're still studying the workings of the rings, the most recent estimate I read is that the rings won't disappear in 3 million years, like a few scientists predicted, but should last for many tens of millions of years.
2007-05-01 11:28:07 · answer #1 · answered by quantumclaustrophobe 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
2 years
2016-05-18 02:39:50 · answer #2 · answered by ? 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
No one knows for sure. The rings are so dynamic and changing, that some people believe that they cannot last very long. Some theories of ring formation predict about a 10,000 to 50,000 year lifespan, I've been told.
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We don't know how long Saturn's rings have been around. They could be quite new. After all, the first confirmed sighting of Saturn's rings was by Galileo in the early 1600s, a mere moment ago in geologic time....
2007-05-01 10:14:33 · answer #3 · answered by Randy G 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Latest estimates place their life expectancy (Saturn's rings) at between 13 and 18 Billion Years, or generally about the life expectancy of the Sun itself.
2007-05-01 10:04:27 · answer #4 · answered by zahbudar 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋
They should last forever, because they will be replaced by more space particles as the inner particles fall to Saturn's gravity.
2007-05-01 10:03:09 · answer #5 · answered by jcann17 5 · 0⤊ 2⤋
They have been around, so far as we know, for billions of years, and I know of no grounds to suppose that they are about to go away anytime within the next few billion years.
2007-05-01 10:03:23 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
acouple more years beacuse the gravity of saturn will pull them into the planet
2007-05-01 10:08:32 · answer #7 · answered by The great king 1 · 0⤊ 2⤋
they'll last until the sun explodes or something else like that happens..... they have been there a long time and will stay there for a long time.
2007-05-01 10:07:45 · answer #8 · answered by Mr. Georgia 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋