Watching Cassini from the Ringside

The Cassini mission is concerning itself with the rings of Saturn. Why should Earth scientists care? Well, those complicated disks of icy chunks are the nearest thing we have to a model of the birth of the solar system. The strange sweeping waves and patterns we see there, where theory suggests little or nothing, are clues to phenomena that aren't in our current models of how the planets came together. So the specialists in early-planetology are wide awake as they watch the news from Cassini. In a few months, the multiple sets of Titan specialists will have the ringside seats.