The rain it raineth every day, as Shakespeare noted, apparently even on Saturn. The cosmos, it seems, is no comfort at this moment.

Instead of being a youthful 400 million years old as commonly thought, the icy, shimmering rings could be around 4.5 billion years old just like Saturn, a Japanese-led team reported Monday.

Computer modeling suggests Saturn's rings are billions of years older than previous research suggests — but the new findings are up for debate.

Saturn's rings might not be younger than the dinosaurs as recently suggested, but nearly as old as the giant planet itself at billions of years in age, a new study says.

The age of the rings that encircle Saturn is under dispute thanks to calculations that show they could have been formed billions – rather than millions – of years ago

A new study suggests that Saturn's rings may be as old as the planet itself, challenging previous estimates about their age. The research, led by scientists from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the University of Tokyo, and the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), was published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

For all the celestial lovers, it's too hard to imagine Saturn without its glorious, extensive rings, isn't it? But here's the truth behind its origin.

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