• Question: What are saturns rings made of and why don't other planets have them?

    Asked by purplebug123 to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 15 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      We think that Saturn’s rings are made up of old moons of Saturn that got pulled apart by tidal forces. They are mostly small chunks of rock and ice.

      In actual fact, all the other giant planets (Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune) have rings, we just can’t see them as well.

      You could also say that the Earth has rings since there’s so many satellites kicking around up there!

    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      Saturn’s rings are mostly ice, with a tiny bit of rock.

      When you get that far out in the solar system, water has to freeze. Around jupiter, the water has frozen into solid moons (with water underneath) like Europa. But on Saturn, we think the gravity is too complicated, and any moons that form get pulled apart into tiny pieces making the rings. There’s actually a moon in the middle of the rings, Enceladus, that’s kicking out water into the rings right now!

    • Photo: Nazim Bharmal

      Nazim Bharmal answered on 20 Mar 2012:

      The rings are made up of dust and ice, and are made up of the same stuff that the moons are made of. I think that the current theory is that two moons collided while they were still forming and this caused the debris; over the years, the gravity from the other moons has smeared the dust and ice out into rings. There are tiny slots on the discs which are caused by small moons, in fact I seem to remember that at least one (small) moon travels between some of the rings.

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