Saturn is my favorite planet (after Earth, of course). Who can resist those beautiful rings, and the clear demarcation of the Cassini Division? There’s also something otherworldly and mysterious about it. Just listen to the opening bars of “Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age” from Gustav Holst’s The Planets:
Years ago I wrote a song, “The Rings of Saturn,” which has never enjoyed a formal recording. That’s a shame, because it is one of my better songs (I write with all humility). It will have to grace an edition of Open Mic Adventures soon. The header image for my Bandcamp page is the a picture of the planet.
Needless to say, I like Saturn a lot. I sometimes image what it would be like living on one of its moons, or if we’ll someday have mining colonies on the larger bits of icy space-stuff in its rings.
Well, it seems those beautiful rings are disappearing. Fortunately, as with all things astronomical, none of us will be around to see them disappear entirely.
According to a piece from Latest Soup, Saturn’s rings are quite young, astronomically speaking. How astronomers and geologists arrive at the ages for distant celestial bodies is beyond me, but it apparently involves measurements obtained from the Cassini mission, which gathered extensive data whilst orbiting Saturn from 2004 to 2017. Part of the loss is due to “ring rain,” in which particles from the rings fall to Saturn.
Like most such pieces, the headline is a bit sensational. Everything involving the entropy of celestial objects takes place over spans of time that are essentially inconceivable to the human mind. We’ll be long gone before Saturn’s rings.
Still, it’s hard to imagine Saturn without rings. Saturn without rings is like Paris without the Eiffel Tower, or McDonald’s without its golden arches (okay, okay—that one isn’t quite as eye-catching). In the estimated 15 to 400 million years (quite a gap there, NASA; seems like you’re hedging your bets a bit!) the rings have left, will far-future humans or some intelligence bemoan the loss of Saturn’s distinct character? At that point, Saturn will be just like any other gas giant—a massive ball of high pressure gasses. BORING!
Fortunately, we’ll have Saturn’s rings to enjoy for years to come. Maybe one day we can visit them. Talk about “putting a ring on it,” eh?
The Portly Politico 
Although I have never had any interest in ‘outer space’, I enjoy the thrill that those who look to the heavens find in what they see.
Telling a tale on myself – in high school, I took ‘earth science’. Absolutely HATED it, lol! Who cares what clouds are called? Who cares about ‘the planets (what was that memorization aid for the names of the planets? Something ‘my mother [Mars] … yada, yada, yada …)? I did, however, get a bang out of isobars. How cool are isobars??? And I liked topographic maps, lol. I am a true earthbounder.
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I do adore a good topographic map. I can stare at those, or any maps, for hours.
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