Saturn's rings are so young that dinosaurs would have looked up at a ringless planet, and measurements from the Cassini probe suggest they are being pulled into the planet fast enough to disappear entirely

Saturn's rings are so young that dinosaurs would have looked up at a ringless planet, and measurements from the Cassini probe suggest they are being pulled into the planet fast enough to disappear entirely

Saturn’s rings look permanent. They are not, in either direction. The best readings from the Cassini spacecraft suggest the rings are a recent addition, young enough that for much of the age of the dinosaurs Saturn was a bare ball of cloud, and that the same rings are now draining into the planet fast enough to vanish on a similar timescale. Neither claim is settled beyond argument. Both come from real measurements, and both point the same way: …