Saturn's Rings Far From Peaceful

Scientists have long thought that Saturn's rings are stable and slow to evolve, but new images from NASA's Cassini orbiter have revealed that they are actually quite fluid and changing. They show that collisions are fairly routine, that chunks of ice leave trails of debris in their wakes, and that, at times, rings will rapidly rearrange themselves. The images also indicate that though the rings are largely composed of water ice, which is white in color, the ice of Saturn's rings is red, colored by an unknown contaminant. More...