Are Saturn's rings made of a lost, shattered moon? New evidence arises for the case

Saturn's iconic rings may be the shattered remains of a long-lost moon — and the same catastrophic event could also explain why the planet is tilted, according to new research.

Results presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas which ran between March 10 and 14 suggest a hypothetical moon called Chrysalis may have ventured too close to Saturn roughly 100 million years ago, where powerful tidal forces stripped away the moon's icy outer layers. Some of that debris may have remained in orbit and eventually collided and spread out to form the complex ring system we see today.

The stripped material was then shaped by gravitational interactions with large moons such as Titan, which could have removed as much as 70% of the initial ring mass over time. This suggests the original ring system may have been several times more massive than it is today.