Saturn X-Ray Anomaly: Score Another for Van Flandern

The juicy part of this article comes at the very end where we find out Saturn's rings reflect almost no x-rays from the sun, which means the rings must be made up of particles no smaller than grains of sand, or the solar x-rays would be broken up and scattered more. Hate to say it y'all but this plays right into the hands of rogue astronomer Tom Van Flandern, who asserts the rings are young, temporary structures. Assuming the rings are from a breakup event, as Van Flandern does, we would not expect small pieces. The establishment however assumes that gradualist, non-catastrophic forces are at work, and that Saturn's rings are an ancient, more permanent feature. But then we would expect smaller pieces in our rings, because they would have had more time to collide and smash each other to bits.