Abstract
We review our understanding of Saturn's rings after nearly 6 years
of observations by the Cassini spacecraft. Saturn's rings are composed
mostly of water ice but also contain an undetermined reddish contaminant.
The rings exhibit a range of structure across many spatial scales;
some of this involves the interplay of the fluid nature and the self-gravity
of innumerable orbiting centimeter- to meter-sized particles, and
the effects of several peripheral and embedded moonlets, but much
remains unexplained. A few aspects of ring structure change on time
scales as short as days. It remains unclear whether the vigorous
evolutionary processes to which the rings are subject imply a much
younger age than that of the solar system. Processes on view at Saturn
have parallels in circumstellar disks. 10.1126/science.1179118
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