Joel Kontinen
One of NASA's Cassini spacecraft’s last acts before it plunged into Saturn was to measure its rings, “to coast between the planet and its rings and let them tug it around, essentially acting as a gravity probe.”
"That estimate -- about 40 percent of the mass of Saturn's moon Mimas, which itself is 2,000 times smaller than Earth's moon -- tells them that the rings are relatively recent, having originated less than 100 million years ago and perhaps as recently as 10 million years ago."
Compare this to the age of the solar system: “4,5 million years” .This is a fraction of its age.
BBC News tells us that Saturn’s rings were formed as the dinosaurs roamed the world- They are very young.
Source:
University of California - Berkeley. 2019. Saturn hasn't always had rings: 2017 Cassini flyby allows first accurate estimate of weight and age of Saturn's rings. Science Daily. (17 January).
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