Are Saturns Rings Made of Cardboard??

We've all been to Starbucks and gotten a super hot cup of coffee. We pick it up expecting to taste greatness only for the cup to scorch our tender hands! What do we do in this situation? Well we reach for that dreamy little cup jacket to protect our delicate paws.

Hot model with Starbucks hand protector sleeve

The model in the photo above has her hands protected by a neat little invention...cardboard! But this isn't just any type of cardboard, this is magical corrugated cardboard. It looks like waves on the inside and it is a heat transfer work of art.

Amazing coffee sleeve close-up

I'm sure by now you're saying "Cool story Chewblagga, but what does this have to do with Saturn??" Well my friends, as you are aware, Saturn has "rings" around it. These rings are made up of tiny chunks of ice, rocks, and dust. A video with more information about the rings and their composition can be found here.

In August of 2009, NASA spacecraft Cassini was cruising around Saturn taking pictures of the rings from different angles and sending pictures back to Earth. What they found from a few photos of the "C" ring was something they hadn't expected. It was almost as if the ring was made of water and somebody had dropped a pebble in the water creating ripple type waves. Well, a few guys form Cornell thought this was pretty interesting and decided to do a research paper on it which can be found here. The waves were created as a result of Saturn tilting and then something rather large colliding with the ring as it was tilting. Shown to the right is a cartoon representation of what the authors believe the creation of the ripples looked like. The top picture shows the tilt and a slight distortion caused by something hitting it on the left side. When the planet tilted back to the right, the ripple began to form. As the planet tilted back and forth, the waves continued to propagate. The waves ended up looking very similar to corrugated cardboard.

The waves remain present today and interestingly enough, Saturn's "D" ring has the same ripple effect. It is possible that the same object created the ripple in both rings, but that object would have to be very large (like the empire state building hurling through space and hitting the rings).

In the end, Saturn's rings and cardboard don't have too much in common. Although they are both made up of tiny materials that conglomerate into something larger, the rings are mostly rock and cardboard is paper. It is still fascinating to me that a pool of organized rocks can be rippled by a collision like a pond ripples when a pebble is tossed in. The universe is mysterious to me and I'm excited to see what waits around the next corner.

-Shane Giskaas