Okay, I’m old. I know it, and people who see me know it. The 40s may be the new 30s, but the 70s are still the 70s! That’s young compared to Harriet, a captive Galapagos tortoise who is 175 years old, or a female Greenland shark believed to be 392 years old, give or take a few years. That’s even young compared to a bristlecone pine tree in California that is over 4,800 years old, or to the rings of Saturn.
Rings of Saturn? Yep, the rings of Saturn. Did you know they are disappearing? As humans we are intrigued with beginnings and endings and with the ending of the rings of Saturn we ask about their beginnings. Have they always been there or are they relatively new? We used to think that the rings were as old as Saturn, which is as old as the Solar System, which is about 4.5 billion years, g…