11/05/2022
To Scale, Saturn's Rings are Thinner Than Paper
The inner circle of Saturn’s seven rings spans about 180,000 miles in circumference. But the rings are, at most, about 0.6 miles. Let’s do some math: at the thickest spot, that amounts to a thickness-to-width ratio of 0.0000033. A standard 8.5-by-11 piece of paper (which is 0.004 inches thick) has a thickness-to-width ratio of 0.00036—or more than a hundred times that of Saturn’s rings.