Saturn’s iconic rings look eternal, but they’re actually disappearing. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft confirmed that the rings are being eroded by Saturn’s gravity, with tiny icy particles falling into the planet as “ring rain.” This process is stripping the rings away at a rate that suggests they’ll be gone in just 100 million years—a blink of an eye in cosmic terms. That means we’re lucky to be living in an era where Saturn even has rings. If dinosaurs had telescopes, they might’ve seen a completely different planet.
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