Missing moon may be answer to how Saturn got its rings

Saturn’s rings weigh about 33 million trillion pounds and are made almost entirely of ice (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science/PA)

The answer to the mystery of how Saturn got its famous rings may lie in a moon that went missing millions of years ago, according to scientists.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US believe that this moon, named Chrysalis, orbited the ringed planet for several billion years until it was violently ripped apart 160 million years ago.