Saturn, the solar system’s fashion-forward planet best known for flaunting its massive rings like it is perpetually at a very glamorous gala, is apparently having a bit of an existential crisis. According to a new study published in the journal Icarus, those iconic rings are not just charming accessories but rather massive clumps of icy debris that are actively falling onto the planet in what scientists call “ring rain.” Yes, Saturn’s most striking feature is leaking.
This is not exactly new information. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft had already tipped us off years ago that Saturn’s rings were shedding material faster than anyone at a planetary beauty pageant would care to admit. The new study, however, adds a bit of sting to the bad news by revealing the rings are vanishing even more rapidly than previously believed. At this rate, Saturn may be back to plain planetary business within just a few hundred million years, which is basically tomorrow in cosmic terms.
The graceful fall of the rings is not some melancholic ballet either. The debris from the rings is being pulled in by Saturn’s gravity, dragged down via an interplay with the planet’s magnetic field in a phenomenon that sounds less poetic and more like the universe sweeping up. For context, the particles plunging into Saturn amount to about 400,000 kilograms every second. That is the mass of seven blue whales per second, in case your scale of planetary mess is calibrated by marine mammals.
The study’s lead author, physicist James O’Donoghue of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, described the process as “extremely quick by astronomical standards.” He explains that the rings are losing so much mass that they may not have formed all that long ago in the planetary scheme of things. In other words, Saturn’s rings might be younger than the dinosaurs and yet still headed for retirement.
As for what this means for the future of Saturn’s ringed glory, well, future astronomers may have to break it to their eager students that no, Saturn is not supposed to look like a celestial vinyl record. Eventually, it may just resemble something much more pedestrian and a lot less sparkly.
A planet’s gotta shed a few rings if it wants to stay light on its feet.