Saturn's Rings and Other Temporary Things

A while ago, I came across an article that talked about how Saturn's rings are slowly disappearing.

Yeah. One of if not THE most distinguishing visible feature of a planet in our solar system is slowly but inevitably slipping away. And that's weirdly sad to think about, even if we're not slated to see them vanish in our lifetime.

When you talk about things on a cosmic scale, you have to use cosmic time, too. Which, of course, means that most things don't have an impact on us at all, because we're just not around long enough to witness them or bear the brunt of the impact. In some ways, that's good, because you're not going to want to be around when the sun goes supernova and destroys everything up to Mars in its death throes. I mean, maybe someday we'll be taking time travel vacations to the future so we can watch our own star go supernova, but in all likelihood, you and I are going to miss out on that cheery apocalypse. And because of time, you and I will always have Saturn's beautiful rings.

Sometimes, though, we do happen to be at the right place at exactly the right time to witness some incredible things. Solar eclipses, for instance? We're alive at exactly the right time where the moon is the perfect distance away to completely obscure the sun when their paths cross. Like Saturn's rings, that won't last forever.

Then there are the supernovae that have been seen from Earth, lighting up the night sky and leaving us with breathtaking nebulae in their wakes, which we still get to see today.

There's tons of other stuff that we get to witness from the depths of space, from rare comets coming around to black holes that actually wander across space instead of sitting still, like you'd hope a nightmare vortex of darkness punched through the fabric of space and time would be courteous enough to do. (And yes, that is 100% a real thing scientists have observed.)

So, while it's kind of sad to think about the things that we've known as "permanent" fixtures of our little corner of space are slowly but surely changing and, in some cases, vanishing (looking at you, Red Spot of Jupiter), it's also pretty amazing to think of all the things we've been able to see and have yet to observe because the universe is always changing.

There's a philosophical lump of either gold or coal somewhere in all of this, but I'll leave that to you to extract. For my part, I'm going to think a little sadly about the idea of Saturn someday losing its rings, and remember fondly a time when I was about six years old and my dad woke me up at 3 AM to go outside and look up at a comet in the sky. Because no matter how fleeting they are, there are some moments that you just don't forget.