What If Saturn Lost Control Of Its Rings? | Unveiled

What if Saturn Lost Control of its Rings?

In 1610, Galileo became the first person to study the skies and determine that the gas giant Saturn was surrounded by a strange, anomalous shape. Centuries later, we know that that shape is a set of enormous rings, a characteristic making Saturn one of the most unique planets in our solar system. But beautiful as they are, nothing lasts forever.

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; what if Saturn lost control of its rings?

You may wonder why Saturn has rings at all? What makes it so special? Well, any planet, or any object with powerful enough gravity could theoretically have similarly large ring formations. The likes of Uranus and Neptune have smaller ringlets today and some of Saturn’s own satellites - particularly Rhea - are also thought to have rings of their own. But even the experts aren’t one-hundred-percent sure on how Saturn got its rings in the first place… The most popular theories suggest that Saturn once had large, icy moons that collided with each other to form the streams of debris we see today; while others argue that they’re actually remnants of ancient comets or dwarf planets. In this way, something similar could happen to Earth. Say an asteroid crashed into the moon and was big enough to destroy it; the fragments could then circle our planet – though, should this ever happen, the fate of humanity doesn’t look good.

More surprising than the fact we’re not sure how Saturn’s rings were made is that the planet is actually losing them at an alarming rate. As part of their epic journeys, the Voyager space probes discovered a phenomenon called “ring rain,” where the particles of ice that make up the rings are being vaporised by UV radiation and tiny meteorites. When this happens, the electrically charged water particles interact with Saturn’s magnetic field and plunge down toward the surface. When it was first noticed in the 1980s, scientists suggested that Saturn’s rings only had around 300 million years left to live - not that long in the grand scheme of a 14-billion-year universe. But, the truth of Saturn’s situation got even harsher when the Cassini space probe more recently discovered that the ring rain is happening much faster than expected. According to Cassini readings, Saturn is being bombarded with 6,000 lbs of rain every second, and the rings will’ve gone completely in 100 million years’ time. So, it’s inevitable that one day Saturn will be stripped of its defining feature.

But what if it lost control of its rings the other way? Rather than ring particles destroying themselves and falling inwards to their own planet, let’s imagine that some catastrophic event destabilises Saturn’s gravity so much that the rings break apart and fly out into the solar system.

Well, in terms of simply the amount of matter we’re dealing with, it’s not all bad. Saturn’s rings are made of 99% ice, with just a small amount of rock mixed in. The total mass of the rings was estimated by Cassini toward the end of its mission… and, despite how iconic and visible the rings seem, they only truly equate to 40% of the mass of Mimas, the smallest of all Saturn’s moons. In effect, the rings are 4,700 times smaller than the Earth’s moon, as they’re mostly made up of empty space.

The icy particles themselves wouldn’t pose a huge risk, either. They range in size from as small as 1 centimetre across, to upwards of ten metres at their largest. Yes, those particles are constantly fighting against the pull of Saturn’s gravity, wanting to escape and fly off into outer space… but they just aren’t that dangerous, and certainly not for Earth. Should even one of the largest balls of ice from Saturn’s rings come hurtling towards us, it’d just burn up and evaporate in our atmosphere because Earth is a much, much warmer prospect.

Even if Saturn’s rings were ejected all at once, with all of them beelining straight for Earth, we wouldn’t have much to fear. Though the particles are enough to produce 6,000 lbs of cosmic, potentially destructive ring rain on Saturn, we’d simply witness an unusual phenomenon where asteroids literally did rain down upon us, only without the everlasting damage. In fact, the spectacle probably wouldn’t look all that different to a regular storm.

Of course, the idea that Saturn’s rings could somehow “take aim” at Earth is completely hypothetical. Everything in the solar system is generally caught between the orbits of the two largest objects: the sun and Jupiter. Saturn’s orbit is right next to Jupiter’s, so the most likely scenario sees those icy particles (though now free from Saturn) too disrupted by the largest gas giant to even begin heading past it towards the sun or any of the inner planets. Instead, the rings could wind up pulled into Jupiter, causing yet another version of ring rain - only this time much closer to the type that Saturn’s currently experiencing.

Say Saturn’s errant particles managed to evade Jupiter, they’d next be incorporated into the asteroid belt - a vast band of mass that essentially exists because Jupiter’s gravity prevents the rocky material inside from forming a true terrestrial planet. But, the asteroid belt also mostly consists of empty space, and there isn’t actually enough material to create a sizeable world of any kind. Right now, more than half of the belt’s total mass is made up of its four largest objects – the dwarf planet Ceres, and the asteroids Pallas, Vesta and Hygiea. Throw Saturn’s rings into the equation and, though they would make a small difference, it wouldn’t be dramatic (or even noticeable).

More likely than anything else, though, is that the ring rain would simply fall much closer to its original home - on one of Saturn’s many moons, including Titan or Enceladus. The rings would, in effect, be absorbed by the largest other objects circling Saturn. And from here, there’s the real prospect of a “ring renaissance” in the future. Most of Saturn’s moons are either made entirely of ice or have a thick covering of it on their surface, which means - even when today’s rings eventually disappear - we’d be just one or two cosmic collisions away from the same thing happening again. In fact, the same is true for any planet with moons.

So, should the rings of Saturn go rogue, there actually wouldn’t be a whole lot to worry about. It’s not an event that would destabilise the solar system and bring about total destruction. But, if the remnants somehow made their way to Earth, it’d briefly and brilliantly light up the sky… before settling down into a planetary system where those iconic bands no longer exist. And that’s what would happen if Saturn lost control of its rings.