Gif of photo of Saturn with its rings dissolving in and out.

How did Saturn get its rings?

Scientists don’t agree on when the planet’s iconic rings formed—or even how they came to be. But the theories have one thing in common: violence.

When the Cassini spacecraft took a 2013 image from above Saturn’s pole, its rings didn’t intersect the planet. In the same Cassini image, but with Saturn’s rings edited out, the planet loses some of its luster.
ORIGINAL CASSINI IMAGE BY NASA/JPL/CALTECH/SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE/CORNELL; PHOTO ILLUSTRATION (RINGS REMOVED)

Even rusty Mars looks more interesting.

Thankfully, at some point in the past 4.5 billion years, the cosmos gave Earth’s neighborhood an upgrade: It put a big, bright, icy ring system around Saturn. 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 system’s iconic features is still an unsolved mystery.

“The planet was formed at a certain point during the formation of the solar system, and we don’t know if the rings formed at the same time or if they were formed much later,” says Cornell University astrophysicist Maryame El Moutamid.

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