that meant they formed in the relatively halcyon days of the recent astronomical past. But how? Saturn now has at least 145 moons and probably possessed many before it developed rings. Scientists ...

But scientists don’t agree on when Saturn’s rings formed—or how the bangles even came to be. And that’s been true for decades. In a twist, it turns out that the genesis of one of the solar ...

Astronomers had long assumed that Saturn's distinctive rings formed around the same time as the planet some 4.5 billion years ago in the earliest days of our Solar System. That assumption received ...

New NASA supercomputer simulations show that Saturn's rings may have been formed by a 'massive collision' of icy moons.

“We still don’t know how these rings formed in the first place.” One theory suggests that the planet’s gravity tore apart one of its many moons (which may number as many as 145), and what we now see ...

New NASA research suggests Saturn's iconic rings haven't been around nearly as long as the planet. Credit: NASA / JPL If Brachiosaurus had binoculars to take in the night sky as it craned to munch ...

If the rings truly formed around the same time as Saturn, it would offer insights into the chaotic early years of the solar system, when planetary formation and migration were at their peak.

Altogether, this ice weighs about half as much as Saturn’s moon Mimas and stretches nearly 175,000 miles from the planet’s surface. Kempf added that for most of the 20th Century, scientists assumed ...

The idea that Saturn's rings are young seemed very strange in the context of the solar system's long evolutionary history." Saturn's rings might not be younger than the dinosaurs as recently ...

A single, doomed moon could clear up a couple of mysteries about Saturn. This hypothetical missing moon, dubbed Chrysalis, could have helped tilt Saturn over, researchers suggest September 15 in ...

The age of Saturn's rings has long been controversial. Some researchers had thought the iconic features formed along with Saturn about 4.5 billion years ago from the icy rubble left in orbit ...

Saturn’s rings were thought to have formed around the same time as the 4.5-billion-year-old planet. Then the Cassini spacecraft studied the planet up close for 13 years and discovered that the ...