That’s crazy to hear. To me, after Saturn, Uranus is the most famous planet with rings because it’s vertical instead of horizontal. That’s the defining feature of Uranus.
IIRC, Saturn's rings are also relatively recent feature. If you think about it, what a time to be alive! Saturn and Uranus have rings and Sun and Moon are in so precious position, that we can experience total eclipse (this won't last too long also, relative to age of Solar system).
"the appalachian mountains are older than saturn’s rings. the appalachian mountains are older than dinosaurs. the appalachian mountains are older than trees. the appalachian mountains are literally older than BONES. the appalachian mountains should be regarded with pure terror."
I know at least at one point during the Cassini mission- though I confess I have not followed this in more than a decade it so I don't know if further study has refuted this idea- a popular theory for the rings was that basically Saturn was constantly forming and destroying moons into rings and back: a moon would get torn up and turned into a ring, then slowly clump back together over time and reform as a moon, then the cycle would continue.
If it makes you feel better, outer planets with all their moons will be in habitable zone for a short time when our Sun will reach red giant stage in some billions of years.
Super glad I'm alive in the few centuries where I can see it in the night sky from the northern hemisphere. I've seen mars too, but it's always down near the horizon. Both are way brighter than any star.
For me it is precisely because I always had in mind the "featureless blue sphere" picture in mind, and never bothered to look deeper. Goes to show how important images are in the public sphere.
To me, after Saturn, Uranus is the most famous planet with rings because of toilet humor.
As an aside, either get or borrow a decent telescope and see the rings of Saturn and the Galilean Moons for yourself. It’s a really neat experience and gives you a direct personal shared experience with the birth of modern astronomy.
Seeing Jupiter, its Great Red Spot, and a line of dots representing 4 of its largest moons, as well as Saturn and its rings through a telescope at a backyard astronomy event when I was a kid was such a ridiculously cool experience. Granted, I was a huge space dork.
It's exactly why Uranus was my favorite planet growing up. It was such an outlier, which, if I dig farther into my psyche, probably aligned well with my self view as the only kid in my class who geeked out on space.
The rings just conform to that axis of rotation along with moons and such.
Also, rings are thought to be relatively recent feature of Uranus (on the order of hundreds of millions of years).