In 18 months, the coolest-looking planet in the Milky Way will lose its most badass feature: Its iconic rings.
Kinda, but not really. But also, yes, Saturn will permanently lose its awesome rings. Confused? Me too, let me explain.
In March of 2025, the rings of Saturn will no longer be visible to Earth. It’s hard to believe just how HUGE Saturn is but let me give you a fun fact: Saturn’s rings are only about 33 feet wide, but extend outward about 43,500 to 87,000 miles, that’s about 30 Earths. (!!)
#SATURN has been losing its rings slowly, but #NASA has now revealed that by 2025, the planet's rings won't be visible to people on #Earth. pic.twitter.com/7ZqhSeMOUn
— Pinaki Das (@pinaki222) November 7, 2023
The rings won’t actually be gone, though… yet. Instead, Saturn’s tilt will be in such a way that they would be practically invisible from Earth.
We won’t have to wait super long to see them again, however, because this is a pattern with Saturn every 15-17 years. Yay.
Here’s the bad news: Eventually, Saturn will eventually completely lose its rings forever.
We’ll be long gone, though, with estimates of Saturn’s rings completely disappearing within 100-300 million years from now (unless science somehow actually comes through with their idea to make us immortal – it’s a real thing). When that happens, Saturn’s atmosphere will rise about 30c in temperature, since Saturn’s rings block out a giant portion of sunlight, which will result in drastic changes to our favorite planet.
