CE240: Stability of Saturn's rings

Claim CE240:

Saturn's rings are unstable. They gradually drift outward, and disruption from bombardment could mean that they could not last more than 10,000 years. The rings cannot be billions of years old.

Source:

Ackerman, Paul D, 1986. It's a Young World After All. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, p. 45. Cited in Hovind, Kent, n.d. Universe is not "billions of years" old. http://www.drdino.com/QandA/index.jsp?varFolder=CreationEvolution&varPage=UniverseIsNotBillionsofYearsOld.jsp
Brown, Walt, 1995. In the Beginning: Compelling evidence for creation and the flood. Phoenix, AZ: Center for Scientific Creation, p. 29.

Response:

Saturn's rings may be less than 100 million years old (Cuzzi and Estrada 1998). However, that says nothing about the age of the planet. The rings could have formed when Saturn captured a small moon that fell within the Roche limit (the distance below which moons will be pulled apart by tidal forces). This could have happened any time in Saturn's history.
Saturn's moons shepherd the particles that make up the rings, preventing them from drifting and maintaining the gaps between the rings. This shepherding may allow the rings to be much older than 100 million years. (However, the color of the rings suggests not much more than 100 million years' worth of accumulated dust.)

Links:

Thompson, Tim, n.d. Answers in Genesis and Saturn's rings. http://noanswersingenesis.org.au/aig_and_saturn's_rings.htm

Matson, Dave E., 1994. How good are those young-earth arguments? http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood-yea.html#proof9

References:

Cuzzi, J. N. and P. R. Estrada, 1998. Compositional evolution of Saturn's rings due to meteoroid bombardment. Icarus 132(1): 1-35.

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