Saturn’s rings found to be a youthful, recent addition to the planet
Nasa’s Cassini probe reveals dust and ice around the planet is only a few hundred million years old
A Nasa spacecraft has discovered that Saturn’s rings formed within the last few hundred million years – much more recently than previously thought. This supports an ongoing debate about their age, suggesting they are not as ancient as the planet itself – which is around 4.5 billion years old.
Saturn has seven rings made up of many chunks of ice no bigger than a boulder. They are very clean, being more than 98% pure water by volume. However, dust from various sources in space is known to move around the solar system on an almost constant basis, falling onto the rings and gradually polluting and darkening them over time.