“Think about the rings like the carpet in your house,” said Dr Sascha Kempf, associate professor in the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at CU Boulder. But the icy chunks in Saturn’s rings are sparkling clean, meaning they cannot have been there since the birth of the planet. Just like a carpet, or a disused shelf, the more dusty the longer it has been left exposed to the elements.
Scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder made the discovery after studying the amount of dust circulating around the planet.ĭust is a good indicator of how long an object has been in place because it accumulates in layers over time. Saturn’s rings are far younger than the planet they circle, scientists have found.Īlthough Saturn is about 4.5 billion years old, its rings are now thought to have formed just 400 million years ago, making them younger than the Earth and many of its animals, such as a sharks, which first evolved 50 million years before.
0 kommentar(er)
