Saturn
about 10 centimeters (four inches). These particles are extremely cold and are possibly
composed of frozen water and other ices. An extensive cloud of hydrogen was also
discovered around the rings. The rings might have resulted when a moon or a passing body
ventured too close to Saturn. The unlucky object would have been torn apart by great tidal
forces on ts surface and in its interior. In , the object may not have been fully formed to begin
with anddisintegrated under the influence of Saturn's gravity. A third possibility is thatthe
object was shattered by collisions with larger objects orbiting the planet ("Pioneer 10, 11").
Voyager I provided much more detail on the beauty, complexity, and sometimes baffling
nature of the rings. The six known rings are actually composed of hundreds of tiny, thin
ringlets with intervening spaces, so that the whole ring system looks something like the
grooves in a phonograph record
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