Saturn's Rings are Fractal

Abstract

Over the past few decades, various conjectures were advanced that Saturn's rings are Cantor-like sets, although no convincing fractal analysis of actual images has ever appeared. We focus on the images sent by the Cassini spacecraft mission: slide #42 "Mapping Clumps in Saturn's Rings" and slide #54 "Scattered Sunshine". Using the box-counting method, we determine the fractal dimension of rings seen here (and in several other images from the same source) to be consistently about 1.6~1.7. This supports many conjectures put forth over several decades that Saturn's rings are indeed fractal.