{"id":85946,"date":"2018-12-17T21:22:54","date_gmt":"2018-12-18T05:22:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/nasa-research-reveals-saturn-is-losing-its-rings-at-worst-case-scenario-rate"},"modified":"2018-12-17T21:22:54","modified_gmt":"2018-12-18T05:22:54","slug":"nasa-research-reveals-saturn-is-losing-its-rings-at-worst-case-scenario-rate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/nasa-research-reveals-saturn-is-losing-its-rings-at-worst-case-scenario-rate","title":{"rendered":"NASA research reveals Saturn is losing its rings at \u2018worst-case-scenario\u2019 rate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mN8o90UbpmE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>New NASA research confirms that Saturn is losing its iconic rings at the maximum rate estimated from Voyager 1 &amp; 2 observations made decades ago. The rings are being pulled into Saturn by gravity as a dusty rain of ice particles under the influence of Saturn\u2019s magnetic field.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe estimate that this \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/ring\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">ring<\/a> rain\u2019 drains an amount of water products that could fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool from Saturn\u2019s rings in half an hour,\u201d said James O\u2019Donoghue of NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. \u201cFrom this alone, the entire ring system will be gone in 300 million years, but add to this the Cassini-spacecraft measured ring-material detected falling into Saturn\u2019s equator, and the rings have less than 100 million years to live. This is relatively short, compared to Saturn\u2019s age of over 4 billion years.\u201d O\u2019Donoghue is lead author of a study on Saturn\u2019s ring rain appearing in <i>Icarus<\/i> December 17.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists have long wondered if Saturn was formed with the rings or if the planet acquired them later in life. The new research favors the latter scenario, indicating that they are unlikely to be older than 100 million years, as it would take that long for the C-ring to become what it is today assuming it was once as dense as the B-ring. \u201cWe are lucky to be around to see Saturn\u2019s ring system, which appears to be in the middle of its lifetime. However, if rings are temporary, perhaps we just missed out on seeing giant ring systems of Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, which have only thin ringlets today!\u201d O\u2019Donoghue added.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2018-12-nasa-reveals-saturn-worst-case-scenario.html\">https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2018&#45;12-nasa-reveals-saturn-worst-case-scenario.html<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New NASA research confirms that Saturn is losing its iconic rings at the maximum rate estimated from Voyager 1 &amp; 2 observations made decades ago. The rings are being pulled into Saturn by gravity as a dusty rain of ice particles under the influence of Saturn\u2019s magnetic field. \u201cWe estimate that this \u2018ring rain\u2019 drains [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85946\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}