Why does Saturn have rings?

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If gravity works by pulling everything to a single point (planets centre), then what’s keeping the rings on their specific axis? Shouldn’t it be an even layer of debris around the planet?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Something collided with something else near Saturn. At first, the debris was a big cloud. Over time, the spin and shape (not a perfect sphere) of Saturn has caused that debris to coalesce around its equator into big rings. Eventually, it will pretty much all fall into the planet like you imagine.

It’s just takes a long time. Also, Saturn is oddly low density, which has the effect of causing this process to take much longer than it would around say Jupiter.

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