Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30-minute program from the Voice of America.

I'm Katie Weaver.

And I'm Mario Ritter Jr.

This program is designed for English learners, so we speak a little slower and we use words and

phrases especially written for people learning English.

On today's program, John Russell has a surprising report about the planet Saturn.

Jill Robbins has a story about Japan's soft bank.

Brian Lynn tells about the top Google searches of the year, then a guest appearance by

Anna Mateo on Lesson of the Day.

But first...

Recent research suggests that Saturn's rings may be older than they look,

and possibly as old as the planet itself.

Instead of being 400 million years old as some had thought,

the icy rings could be the same age as Saturn, 4.5 billion years old.

A Japanese-led research team reported Saturn's rings may be in good condition,

not because they are young, but because they are dirt-resistant. For many years, scientists had

believed that Saturn's rings were between 100 million and 400 million years old.

This idea came from more than 10 years of observations by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The spacecraft studied Saturn before its mission

ended in 2017. Images by Cassini showed no evidence of any darkening of the rings by impacts from micrometeoroids, space rock particles smaller

than a grain of sand. The finding led scientists to believe the rings formed long after

the planet. Through computer modeling, the Institute of Science Tokyo's Ryuki

Hiodo and his team showed that micrometeoroids become gas or small liquid drops once they hit

...