The Enigma of Saturn’s Rings

Unveiling the mysteries behind the origin of the rings.

Ian Christopher D. Pesigan

Where did Saturn’s rings come from? That was the biggest controversy and mystery that still

bugged the scientists who are exploring space. Saturn’s majestic, iconic rings define the planet,

but where did they come from? Although the other three gas giants in our solar system Jupiter,

Uranus and Neptune also have rings, none are as dense, thick and just plain eye-popping as

Saturn's.

These bands of mostly icy particles start about 4,000 miles (6,437 kilometers) above Saturn's

equator and extend out some 75,000 miles (120,700 kilometers) into space. Numerous gaps in

the rings exist, carved out by tiny moons or from gravitational interactions with more distant

orbiting bodies. Interestingly, the rings could be young, relatively speaking, at just a few hundred

million years old. Or not: they might date back to Saturn's birth more than four billion years ago.

We’ve known about Saturn’s rings since 1610, when Galileo was the first person to turn a

telescope on them. The resolution was primitive, and he thought he saw “handles” attached to

Saturn, or perhaps what were big moons on either side. In 1659, using a better telescope, the

Dutch astronomer Christian Huygens figured out that these “handles” were actually rings. And

finally in the 1670s, the Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini was able to resolve the rings in

more detail, even observed the biggest gap in the rings.

The Cassini mission, named after Giovanni, has been with Saturn for almost a decade, allowing

us to view the rings in incredible detail. Determining the origin and evolution of Saturn’s rings

has been one of its objectives.

The Cassini mission was the emergence of the eye opening facts that can determine the origin of

Saturn’s rings. And here is the two of my proposed theory. The Enceladus Twin Theory and

The Aftermath Theory.

The Enceladus Twin Theory

This theory suggest that something happen near Saturn that created the majestic rings it now

have. My theory suggest that the rings came from the clash or bombardment between a dead

moon and a comet. The Cassini mission sent to explore Saturn shows that the rings are mostly

composed of icy particles and rocks. We do know that Saturn have many moons, it have around

60 plus moons. The theory explains that the clash of a comet to one of Saturn’s moon creates its

rings. Saturn’s moon mostly are chilled and icy because of their location to the sun. The particles

after the bombardment were pulled by Saturn’s strong gravity and continues to clash with each

other while it orbits around Saturn breaking it to the pieces they were now. Also the discovery of

one of the majestic Saturn’s moon, Enceladus shows that the icy particles are similar to the icy

particles the Enceladus have. That only means that there was once a moon which is the same to

Enceladus, which is now dead because it was struck by a comet and all their particles were

pulled by the Saturn’s gravity making its rings.

The Aftermath Theory

My second theory suggests that the ring of Saturn’s were just left-overs or product of the

aftermath of the creation of the solar system and the planet itself. My theory was based on the

nebular theory of the creation of our Solar System. In the nebular theory it discussed that the

planet’s composition and characteristics were formed based on their distance to sun, meaning

that the closer you are to the sun the higher elements the planets were formed and the farther you

are to the sun formed ices of water, methane and ammonia planets. The formed planetisimals

continued to clash with each other and only the larger planetisimals to survive were to form a

planets. The Aftermath theory explains that the left over from the continues clash of each

planetisimals to form a planet were pulled by the gravity of Saturn to create its rings.