Abstract: Our current understanding of planet formation is informed by ongoing observations of circumstellar disks around young stars. The improving spatial resolution of these observations has revealed a variety of structures in these dusty gas disks, including gaps, spiral waves, warps, and lopsided distributions of dust particles. These observations are restricted to a single viewing geometry from Earth and by limited spatial resolution. Analogous structures are observed in Saturn’s rings with a multitude of viewing geometries and superb spatial resolution, thanks to the Cassini mission to Saturn. Thus, Saturn’s rings provide a unique laboratory to test our dynamical theories for structure formation in disks. A general overview of the dynamical state of Saturn’s rings as well as current efforts of model particular structures will be presented. As is often the case, the more detailed observations of Saturn’s rings have yielded many surprises that continue to challenge the dynamical modelers.
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