Mortals in The Lord of the Rings were doomed to one day die, and those who tried to fight their fate only made things worse ...

The difference between invulnerable and immortal is similar to the difference between being dead and being mostly dead; it’s a matter of perspective.

The planet’s rings, in other words, are new phenomena, arising (and potentially even disappearing) in what amounts to a blink of an eye in cosmic terms. “We know approximately how old the rings are, ...