We all know many of the asteroids in the Geonosian ring were huge, many kilometers wide, right? The partially hollow rock that Fett used to flank Kenobi was bigger yet.
While watching AOTC on HBO, it struck me that most planetary rings consist of tiny rocks, most of which are no more than a few meters wide if that (Saturn's ring is a good example). Over time, the biggest rocks are subject to the most impacts, which tends to fragment everything in a ring until you're left with a fine "sand" of rock.
My guess is that the Geonosian ring is pretty young, created decades (?!), hundreds of years, or maybe several thousand before AOTC (?). Depending on just how old it is, could it be that the ring was formed artificially; e.g., a huge collision with that planet's shield? An early superlaser test against a satellite body maybe?
I like this idea somewhat better than a recent impact event which ejected that much material back into orbit. I suppose that could've happened, assuming enough time passed for Geonosis to return to its beautiful, arid, sandy self, but that requires ascribing a bit more resilience than I'm willing to give the Geonosian race (assuming, of course, that's been their home for a really long time). An impact that created a ring from THAT much ejecta would have to be rather hard to recover from, after all.
Thoughts? Do the asteroids themselves offer any clues as to their age or likely origin? I tried to note how "pock-marked" the bigger rocks were, but I paid little attention to their color, for instance...I was too busy marvelling at Slave One again
