Saturn With No Rings?

[quantumcupcakes]

I can't decide whether the discovery that Saturn may lose its rings in 100 million years because they are literally raining away into the planet's atmosphere is the saddest or most beautiful thing



We only discovered the phenomenon back in 2013. It's incredible how much we've learned since then.

(This was supposed to be a post about our outing to Winter Wonderland. But I had to share that instead. I can always write tomorrow about what we did today)

Comments

[cosmolinguist]

We live in such a charmed astronomical time.

I was telling somebody yesterday how lucky we are that coincidentally the moon and the sun appear the same size right now so we can have total solar eclipses. It seems like one of those things that everyone should get but probably most planet-dwellers never would at all, and this planet didn't always and won't always.

[colls]

And we thought Earth had problems.... heh.
;)

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Wabi-sabi. Some things are beautiful because they are fleeting and imperfect.

[strangelyjonathan]

I can't imagine Saturn without rings, but somehow I find that the reminder of naturally occurring changes in the bigger picture outside of our own little Earth bubble, not caused by our own idiocracy, is comforting.