Age of the rings

I've asked this before, but never had an answer.

In "2001: A Space Odyssey" Arthur Clarke writes "As long ago as 1945, a
British astronomer had pointed out that the rings were ephemeral;
gravitational forces were at work which would soon destroy them. Taking
this argument backwards in time, it therefore followed that they had
been created only recently - a mere two or three million years ago".
Who was the British astronomer, and where did he say this?
He also has an interesting passage about the structure of the rings.
"There were at least fifty subdivisions or boundaries, where there were
distinct changes in the brightness of the planet's gigantic halo. It was
as if Saturn was surrounded by scores of gigantic hoops."
Of course we now know there are thousands of subdivisions, but it looks
as though someone saw or predicted a complex structure long before
Voyager showed us.
--
What have they got to hide? Release the full Beagle 2 report.
Remove spam and invalid from address to reply.

On Fri, 2 Jul 2004 19:59:20 +0100, in uk.sci.astronomy , Jonathan
Silverlight wrote:

I've asked this before, but never had an answer.

In "2001: A Space Odyssey" Arthur Clarke writes "As long ago as 1945, a
British astronomer had pointed out that the rings were ephemeral; "

As long ago as 1857 Maxwell showed they could only be stable if composed of
particles. Beyond that, its been prettyy much assumed since forever that
tehy could not be permanent. Either way I can't find any evidence of anyone
saying what Clarke suggests. It is of course quite true, except that the
latest thinking is that the rings are probably a few hundred million years
old, and continually break up and reform as gravitational forces work for
and against their formation. Gravitational forces are currently keeping
them in place.
--
Mark McIntyre
CLC FAQ http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
CLC readme: http://www.angelfire.com/ms3/bchambless0/welcome_to_clc.html


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Wasn't it Jonathan Silverlight who wrote:

He also has an interesting passage about the structure of the rings.
"There were at least fifty subdivisions or boundaries, where there were
distinct changes in the brightness of the planet's gigantic halo. It was
as if Saturn was surrounded by scores of gigantic hoops."
Of course we now know there are thousands of subdivisions, but it looks
as though someone saw or predicted a complex structure long before
Voyager showed us.

I'm sure that it would be possible to make this determination by
observing the light curve of a star that passes behind the rings, but I
can't seem to find any hard evidence of anyone actually doing it. People
have been observing such events since 9 February 1917, so there's plenty
of opportunity for someone to have plotted the light curve and counted
the number of changes in brightness.

--
Mike Williams
Gentleman of Leisure