Saturn's Rings Are Disappearing At a 'Worst-Case Scenario' Rate, NASA Says (usatoday.com) 228
A new study published in the journal Icarus found that Saturn is losing its signature rings at a "worst-case scenario" rate, and the bands could disappear completely within 100 million years. USA Today reports: The rings are being pulled into the planet "by gravity as a dusty rain of ice particles under the influence of Saturn's magnetic field," NASA said. The phenomenon is called "ring rain," and it drains enough water from rings to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool every 30 minutes, said James O'Donoghue of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "From this alone, the entire ring system will be gone in 300 million years," O'Donoghue said in a statement. "But add to this the Cassini-spacecraft measured ring-material detected falling into Saturn's equator, and the rings have less than 100 million years to live. We are lucky to be around to see Saturn's ring system, which appears to be in the middle of its lifetime."
And 30% of Americans blame this on ... (Score:2, Funny)
Here's a fun game. Go out on the street and ask 30 random people what could be causing Saturn's rings to slowly dissapear. But first take a guess what the number one answer will be.
Re:And 30% of Americans blame this on ... (Score:5, Funny)
Global warming?
Re: (Score:2)
Probably you'd find a number like that. It is also very likely that very few, if any scientists, would blame the disappearance on global warming.
Which probably should indicate we should listen more to scientists instead of random Americans when it comes to figuring out cause and effect and making predictions.
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
Of course...don't you know that earth's global warming is the leading cause of the failure of the sun, and eventually our whole solar system if we don't do something NOW??
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because, in 100 (million) years, all the land on Saturn will be covered in water!
Re: (Score:2)
I'm busy today. (Score:2)
From the Slashdot story: "... could disappear completely within 100 million years..."
Does anyone mind if I worry about that tomorrow?
Re: (Score:2)
100 million years!
Fuck!
We need new taxes and a hashtag, pronto!
Re: (Score:2)
Let's turn this into a positive: companies can exchange "Saturn ring credits" which can be bought from the government. Win-win!
Here are the real answers, the actual results (Score:4, Funny)
They actually won't be visible in a few years (Score:2)
By the way, this person's answer is also correct:
> They aren't disappearing it just appears they are due to Saturn's rings angle compared to the earth making most telescopes unable to see the rings.
In a few years, we won't be able to see the rings of Saturn because we'd be looking at them from the edge. if you want to see them, or want your kids to see them, now is the time to do so.
Re: (Score:2)
The forces of the university as...
Wow, someone thinks their school has a much bigger impact on reality than it actually does.
Re: (Score:2)
Several Slashdot commenters mentioned "global warming".
I see eight responses (16%) which clearly suggest the respondent was thinking in terms of global warming:
The changing atmosphere
Changes in atmosphere on Saturn
There is an increase in carbon dioxide
the air in the ozone could be one of the reasons
The sun is burning hotter and as the sun orbits closer it could be causing the rings to fade.
The sun is causing the ice within the rings to melt and fall back down to the planet.
Probably global warming.
The planet
Re: (Score:2)
https://variety.com/2013/tv/ne... [variety.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
In my neighborhood, 23 said Uranus. And the other 7 said Pluto.
And most of them would be accidentally correct.
Re: (Score:2)
In my neighborhood, 23 said Uranus.
And they are correct. That is one of the four with rings.
Re: (Score:2)
#uranusnow
(with the understanding that many still pronounce # as pound instead of hashtag)
Re: (Score:2)
Uranus would have been my second choice, after Saturn. It's a good guess that there would be dark rings around Uranus.
Re: (Score:2)
Never tell me the odds.
Re: (Score:2)
Space was fine until humans sent missions on fly pasts.
Re: (Score:2)
Trump?
Global Warming?
The Communists?
Satan?
Jews?
Blacks?
Whites?
Cuba?
Fluorine?
Democrats?
Republicans?
I guarantee you all of these answers will appear somewhere
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, forgot Aliens, The Government, The Cops and Mexicans. Ans since this is /. we should add Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Google too.
Did I get all the 21st century bogeymen? Radiation perhaps?
Re: (Score:2)
Shit, I forgot the Russians and the FBI or the CIA! Of course! I knew I forgot something. Throw the Chinese and maybe the Japs in for good measure too. Or it might be a military experiment by Uncle Sam.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh lordy, forgot about Muslims, Iran, Al Queda, Osama Bin Laden, ISIS and Saddam. The most important bogeymen of them all!
Re: (Score:2)
Hmmm.
Now class this brings me to my next point. Don't. Smoke. Crack.
Re: (Score:2)
The big one today is...MEN.
Re: And 30% of Americans blame this on ... (Score:2)
You forgot GMOs.
Re: (Score:2)
And NGOs.
Re: (Score:2)
Spiders?
Bees?
Quicksand?
Re: (Score:2)
You forgot the rich.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually president Trump just announced: "Let's make Saturn great again!".
Re: (Score:2)
Make Saturn ring again.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure a lot more will just say that these damn scientists just want more grant money so they scaremonger disappearing rings so they can steal our way of life and dictate that we can't drive SUVs anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, in "sports terms" you neglected to mention that the rules of the game were biased (gerrymandering, voter suppression), refs were bought (electoral fraud) and there was a significant home field advantage (gross imbalance in free media coverage). Then there's the huge difference in respect for the rules, one team had none. While there's nothing wrong with your analogies, they are carefully chosen to paint an inaccurate picture of what happened.
It's all fine to say that the better team failed to win bec
Re:And 30% of Americans blame this on ... (Score:5, Funny)
At what point in your thought process did you think "slashdot will surely understand this better if I use a sports-based metaphor"?
Re: (Score:2)
Good point, especially the American football one. Should have used a soccer or Fortnite analogy.
Slashdot, news for jocks (Score:2)
That's funny.
It *is* an apt analogy, however.
Re: (Score:2)
I prefer zypper analogies you insensitive clod!
Re: And 30% of Americans blame this on ... (Score:2)
Re: And 30% of Americans blame this on ... (Score:2)
Watching miss universe a couple of nights ago, they had three commentators, including a very effeminate man who was probably some fashion guy. He got excited near the start and said âoethis is like the World Series of fashion; of course I shouldnâ(TM)t use a football analogy.â
Yeah, probably not. Especially when nerds are laughing at you.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Because it has been done 10,000 times and is always ignored? The same way it is ignored when you say that Hillary was "colluding" when paying the Russians for the "dossier" (but, I guess that was ok because she laundered the payments through her law firm Perkins Cole), or that the Clinton Foundation was a pay-to-play scheme (and that is coming to light now that Louis Lerner and other Obama appointees aren't in office to cover for them).
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody paid "the Russians" for this.
Christopher Steele is on the record saying that he paid Russians for their lies. Hillary's team is the one that expanded it to include the Russians. If Trump was "colluding" by his son and a staffer meeting with a Russian, because the Russian claimed to have something useful, then how was paying for that information not colluding?
I'm not sure why you'd say money was "laundered" through Perkins Cole,
Because, it was not reported as "opposition research". It was reported as legal fees. The point of my snarky comment was that people have actually argued with me that it was ok
Re: (Score:2)
This is probably the perspective you're looking for: https://xkcd.com/1732/ [xkcd.com]
Re: (Score:2)
This reminds me of the graphs of computer performance that they used to print in Byte Magazine. It would show a huge increase, because the graph was cut off to show the numbers from 90% to 100%.
Really, that graph you show is just as meaningless.
Re: (Score:2)
Meaningless? It shows 20,000 years of context. It includes noticeable warm and cold periods in that period, and makes it quite obvious how the current warming is different from all of those fluctuations. I admit it doesn't show 100 million years, but do you think that over those 100 million years, you'd find more than one event with a faster temperature change than today?
I think you'd find at most one, about 65 million years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Extension (Score:2)
I propose a sequel to Wall-E, where humanity realizes Saturns rings are almost gone - but saves the day by replacing missing ring-ice with plastic floating in the oceans of Earth!
Re: (Score:2)
Future though! (Score:2)
all of the plastic in earth's oceans wouldn't replace even one *millionth* of Saturn's rings
Aha, you are talking about all the plastic now - remember this is Wall-E FanFic, set in a distant time after much plastic has had time to accumulate, and the citizens showed a propensity for leaving crap outside!
An interesting technical exercise - would all of the hydrocarbons on Earth manage to produce enough plastic to make a dent in replacing Saturn's rings?
Here's what we'll do (Score:5, Funny)
We'll build bid, fat, beautiful new rings. They'll go up so fast your head will spin!
And Enceladus will pay for it!
Re: (Score:2)
We'll build bid, fat, beautiful new rings.
Eh, like other large-scale pork projects, I expect it will be a no-bid contract.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re: Tax the sh*t out of people (Score:2)
There are no leftists in Europe. They're the centre, whether you go by global average or by the range of possible political views.
Re: (Score:2)
There are leftists now in the EU? Care to point them out? I thought by now they're all gone.
Space Force (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not enough?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I mean that there is not enough material in Staturn's ring because they're disappearing. :)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
But that's good news, isn't it? (Score:4, Funny)
It means the Ace Rimmers across the multitudinous universes are living longer, on average - so the orbital decay of their coffins is happening more frequently than new coffins are arriving.
Re: (Score:3)
Smoke a kipper for me, skipper. I'll be back for breakfast....
This is why we can't have nice things. (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously. You want to know what is truly to blame for people willfully ignoring climate change? Science journalism. When I see articles like this, that talk about an interesting observation of an astronomical phenomenon in the same way that the National Emergency Broadcasting System talks about impending thermonuclear annihilation, it makes me jaded to articles about things that actually affect me or more importantly, things that I affect. It isn't the fault nor really the responsibility of scientists to prevent their discoveries from falling in the hands of hacks, but it is BeauHD's fucking job to keep clickbait bullshit off the front page of Slashdot.
Worst case scenario?? (Score:4, Interesting)
What does this even mean, in this context?
I mean, apart from external realities causing science to lose it characteristic dispassion?
Re: Worst case scenario?? (Score:2)
It means that if you were to take the equations modelling the system and look for the values that produce the greatest negative first order differential, the values Cassini was capable of observing are very close to those required.
Or, if you like, increasing or decreasing any of those values would result in the rate of change declining.
This is the only sense in which you can speak of a bound. If you choose to call this worst, and probably only the media do, it's childish but at least based on something real
Humans too (Score:2)
So basically you shouldnt worry too much about what happens 100 million years ago, civilization will not last 100 thousand XD
Re: Humans too (Score:2)
So?
Science was about discovery, understanding and prediction, last time I looked.
Not about one species or any member therein.
Re: (Score:2)
You really think that we won't see the end of it?
Well, depends, if you're young enough, you just might.
Will be dead in less than 50 (Score:3)
Re: Will be dead in less than 50 (Score:5, Insightful)
Did anyone ask you to be?
Since when was astronomy or astrophysics about your feelings?
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, I'm so concerned.
How about Jupiter? There is a good chance the Great Red Spot will be gone in a few decades.
Maybe we could drop in a few thermonuclear weapons in the right spot to give it a kick?
That kind of puts the 100 million years for the rings in perspective.
https://news.nationalgeographi... [nationalgeographic.com]
"Worst case scenario"? (Score:2)
Why is it a "worst" case scenario? Why not a best case scenario? Saturn will lose those freakish rings and will soon morph into a normal round planet like everyone else. It can be proud of its body for once.
Re: (Score:2)
Stop ringshaming, please.
Re: (Score:2)
Right, this absurd value judgement has utterly no meaning. It is also a quote attributed to "NASA scientists" but does not appear in the quoted study.
"We are lucky to be around to see Saturn’s ring system, which appears to be in the middle of its lifetime," said O'Donoghue.
This is also not at all clear and is completely meaningless. What is special about the rings that makes us lucky to have seen them and how are we not unlucky to have not lived at another time to have seen even greater things? How
Needs one ring to rule them all (Score:2)
That's the ticket.
Probably humanity's fault? (Score:2)
The Cassini probe May have disrupted the delicate balance of the rings when it flew by. That butterfly's effect of gravity cascaded into all the rings collapsing into the planet. We should just stay home?
Not bad... (Score:5, Funny)
Wait... it's not that Saturn right...?
Not to worry... (Score:2)
the rings have less than 100 million years to live
With the incredible rate of advancement of technology, we'll probably blow them up long before then!
Now when did they form? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, that's what I'm wondering. Once we figure out more, can we work backward? What caused them? How big/bright did they used to be? Did Jupiter used to look like Saturn, but clear out its rings faster, or are they of a different origin and type?
Also we're lucky with our Moon (Score:2)
We're lucky to live in the 400 or 500 million year window when Saturn's rings are spectacular huh? I think we're also lucky to live in a time when we get those nice solar eclipses. Our moon used to be closer, probably blotted out too much of the sun, and someday it'll be further away, only annular eclipses.
Truly, these are the best of times. Unless of course, Wolf-Rayet 104 blasts off or Yellowstone erupts or ...
And?... So? (Score:2)
They'll be gone in 100 years? (Score:2)
Fuck you and your meaningless numbers (Score:2)
I love when people use numbers that appear big, except when compared to *really* big numbers.
...it drains enough water from rings to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool every 30 minutes...
OH NO! Except...
... the entire ring system will be gone in 300 million years...
300,000,000 years * 365 days * 48 half-hours in a day = 5,256,000,000,000. So there are 5.256 TRILLION swimming pools worth of water up there. I'm not going to lay awake tonight worrying about this.
Source unknown = duration unknown (Score:2)
The cause/source of the rings is still unknown. Thus, how do they know they'll disappear if the source is not known? The cause/source may replenish the rings.
While a one-time collision is one possible cause, periodic ice-burping by a moon or two may also be the source.
One interesting theory is that periodically a pair of moons get too close to each other, heat each other up, melt their cores, burp water/ice, swap orbits, and then drift into normal orbits for a while again. (Sounds like my marriage.)
but wait, there was more ... (Score:2)
And we're unlucky to have missed Jupiter's rings, which were far more impressive.
Re:so, contrary to theory... (Score:5, Informative)
accretion disks DO NOT condense into discrete well-defined orbital bodies like planets (or in this case, moons)
Planetary rings are not accretion disks. So your statement is already wrong from the first two words. Even so, there is evidence that some of Saturn's moons were formed partially out of condensed ring material.
the Big Bang theory as a simple explanation of everything we see.
The Big Bang theory has little to do with ring mechanics. Maxwell already had a comprehensive model of how the rings worked (based on Newtonian physics) 70 years before Lemaitre posed the idea of a Big Bang.
Re: (Score:2)
I thought the Big Bang Theory was about the blonde chick and the nerds?
Re: (Score:2)
Don't let the mere fact that some of Saturn's rings have already coalesced into moons/moonlets, and never mind that a SINGLE SOLITARY end to ALL MATTER in ALL RINGS is the stupidest idea yet... planetary accretion discs and what is essentially a rubble disc around a planet are two very different things, being acted on different events, and in different environments. This isn't a one-or-the-other scenario. If you weren't trying so hard to disprove ALL physics
Re: Heat from the sun (Score:2)
Evolution is fixed rate.
Yawn (Score:2)
Got anything better to do than post irrelevant things about stuff beyond you?
Be like Strax.
We're the clever ones (Score:2)
You're the potato one
Re: (Score:2)
I'm more expecting the conspiracy nuts to say that this is all fake and that the scientists only fabricate it so they can somehow destroy our murrican way of life.