Strongest Evidence Yet Confirms Saturn’s Remarkably Young Rings

A new study led by physicist Sascha Kempf at the University of Colorado Boulder has revealed the strongest evidence yet that Saturn’s rings are considerably younger than previously theorised. The study, published in Science, suggests that the iconic rings may be just 10 million to 100 million years old, which suggests they formed relatively recently, potentially after the reign of the dinosaurs. The evidence was gathered by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which detected ring particles that appeared lighter than expected when passing through the planet’s shadow. Previously, scientists believed the rings could be over 4 billion years old.