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Maybe We Should Harvest Saturn's Rings While We Still Can
Science fiction writer Alfred Bester joked about harvesting Saturn's beautiful rings in his 1974 novel The Computer Connection:
Saturn was quite a sight as it came looming up... Alas, only the two inner rings remain. Despite violent protests by ecologists and cosmologists, the Better Building Conglomerate had been permitted to harvest the third outer ring for some kind of better building aggregate. There was a housing crisis, and the [Conglomerate] paid enormous taxes. One infuriated astronomer had been euthanized for burning the chairman of the board.
It turns out that Saturn's rings might not be a permanent feature after all:
I'd been smart enough to be prepared; a huge wicker hamper with enough deli for months, clean linen and blankets. A freighter to Saturn is no luxury jet...
(Read about harvesting Saturn's rings)
(Saturn's chunky rings)
Saturn’s rings, which are made up of large chunks of ice, are falling in on the planet as icy rain due to the planet’s intense gravity.Contrary to popular belief, the rings are not a permanent feature of Saturn and some experts have suggested they could be only 100 million years old...
Dr James O’Donoghue, who is leading the research, will track the destruction rate of Saturn’s rings using some of the world’s most powerful telescopes, including the Keck telescope in Hawai’i and the space-based James Webb Space Telescope.
“We’re still trying to figure out exactly how fast they are eroding," Dr O’Donoghue said. “Currently, research suggests the rings will only be part of Saturn for another few hundred million years. This may sound like a long time, but in the history of the universe this is a relatively quick death. We could be very lucky to be around at a time when the rings exist.
(Via University of Reading)
So, maybe we should make some use of them after all...
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 4/21/2023)
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