If Earth had a saturnian ring-system [video]

[cosmicalstorm]

Ever wondered what the Earth's night sky would look like if our planet was equipped with a ring like that around Saturn? Well wonder no more.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=75e_1258653471

[Qwerty 42]

That's actually really breathtaking. Certainly would be interesting.

[Phantasee]

How would the shadows from the rings affect the areas below them? Would it turn to night for certain latitudes? How would plants and animals react to it? How would the shadows move over the course of a day, especially on the edges of the areas affected?

I'm having a little trouble wrapping my head around it.

[Zor]

How would the shadows from the rings affect the areas below them? Would it turn to night for certain latitudes? How would plants and animals react to it? How would the shadows move over the course of a day, especially on the edges of the areas affected?

I'm having a little trouble wrapping my head around it.

Well they don't seem to be thick enough to eclipse the sun, although i would be more conserned about the times when material is knocked out of the rings to the planet's surface.

That said, this is a beautiful little work.

Zor

[Shinova]

Wouldn't ring material typically just burn up in the atmosphere?

[Duckie]

uh, shinova, the ring isn't in the atmosphere. It's around the planet. Like, far away.

With that said, a saturnine ring around earth would be impossible for one logical reason: It is pretty because it is primarily made of ice. Ice in space in the habitable zone doesn't work.

An earth-centered ring would be made of the dust from a shattered moon and would be a nearly invisible small black band that would reenter the earth within a few thousand to million years due to a lack of a dozen small moons to shepherd it and supply it with new particles like saturn has.* Its only effect would be a slight global cooling and nightly meteor showers (the non-deadly kind, the kind that look like shooting stars, not the thing that you think of when you hear 'meteor').

*You can magic in a dozen small moons and a destroyed 13th one to make a ring, like the fantasy setting Eberron did, but there's no realistic way such a planet could form, and even then it wouldn't be a pretty one like saturn but a rock dust one.

[CaptainChewbacca]

That would make the night sky INCREDIBLY bright, biology would change significantly because of it.

[Oskuro]

I wonder what the social and scientifical implications of such a thing would have been. For one, I guess the notion of the planet being an sphere would have been accepted earlier. Navigation would have been greately enhanced too.

[Neko_Oni]

uh, shinova, the ring isn't in the atmosphere. It's around the planet. Like, far away.

I think Shinova was referring to this:

Well they don't seem to be thick enough to eclipse the sun, although i would be more conserned about the times when material is knocked out of the rings to the planet's surface.

[Lord of the Abyss]

An earth-centered ring would be made of the dust from a shattered moon and would be a nearly invisible small black band

Why would it be black when the Moon, also made of rock looks pale?

[LadyTevar]

*jaw drops*

This would change Biology, Theology, and Astrology/Astronomics

[SAMAS]

*jaw drops*

This would change Biology, Theology, and Astrology/Astronomics

Pretty much, yeah. I could imagine around the equator, it might be thought of as being a tower, or a wall around the earth in Europe or Asia.

[starslayer]

An earth-centered ring would be made of the dust from a shattered moon and would be a nearly invisible small black band that would reenter the earth within a few thousand to million years due to a lack of a dozen small moons to shepherd it and supply it with new particles like saturn has.* Its only effect would be a slight global cooling and nightly meteor showers (the non-deadly kind, the kind that look like shooting stars, not the thing that you think of when you hear 'meteor').

The rings would spiral out, not in. The main instability of Saturn's rings is due to radiation pressure from the Sun, not tidal effects from Saturn itself. Solar radiation pressure tends to blow the ring particles into a higher orbit. In a terrestrial ring system, the D and C ring equivalents could possibly spiral in, but the rest would drift off into space. You are correct though it that any such ring would be dark and not very visible.

Why would it be black when the Moon, also made of rock looks pale?

Moon rock formed in a fundamentally different way than did the rock that would make up terrestrial rings. The Moon coalesced as one giant piece; it was completely molten for a couple million years after it formed (it only took one year to form after the impact). And while anorthosite tends to be pale, the ring material would be much more similar to the breccias and regolith that cover a good portion of the Moon's surface. This material is much darker than the Lunar highlands and bedrock; much of the Moon only looks bright because it is reflecting the Sun, obviously an incredibly powerful source.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Why would it be black when the Moon, also made of rock looks pale?

Moon rock formed in a fundamentally different way than did the rock that would make up terrestrial rings. The Moon coalesced as one giant piece; it was completely molten for a couple million years after it formed (it only took one year to form after the impact). And while anorthosite tends to be pale, the ring material would be much more similar to the breccias and regolith that cover a good portion of the Moon's surface. This material is much darker than the Lunar highlands and bedrock; much of the Moon only looks bright because it is reflecting the Sun, obviously an incredibly powerful source.

But even the darker areas of the Moon look grey not black, and a ring would be exposed to the Sun the same way. It just seems to me that regardless of how it might look when held in your hand, when seen at such distances it would likely look at most grey like the darker areas of the Moon, not black. Or is the apparent grey color of the darker areas of the moon just due to some sort of visual bleed over from the paler parts?

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Why would it be black when the Moon, also made of rock looks pale?

Moon rock formed in a fundamentally different way than did the rock that would make up terrestrial rings. The Moon coalesced as one giant piece; it was completely molten for a couple million years after it formed (it only took one year to form after the impact). And while anorthosite tends to be pale, the ring material would be much more similar to the breccias and regolith that cover a good portion of the Moon's surface. This material is much darker than the Lunar highlands and bedrock; much of the Moon only looks bright because it is reflecting the Sun, obviously an incredibly powerful source.

But even the darker areas of the Moon look grey not black, and a ring would be exposed to the Sun the same way. It just seems to me that regardless of how it might look when held in your hand, when seen at such distances it would likely look at most grey like the darker areas of the Moon, not black. Or is the apparent grey color of the darker areas of the moon just due to some sort of visual bleed over from the paler parts?

The Moon has the same mean albedo as asphalt. Rings here would look more like the rings of Uranus and Neptune (rings of charcoal,) than the rings of Saturn, on account of Saturn's rings being made up of icy dust and rock and the other two having less ice in their rings. A ring here would have no ice at all, but it would still be absolutely breathtaking, even if it were even a fraction of the size of Saturn's ring system; and would still provide a couple full Moons worth of light on the night-side of the planet.

[Zixinus]

Awesome bit of photoshopping.

[Havok]

Wow. That is damn impressive.

We need to blow up the moon immediately!

Actually, that raises a question... Would there be any effects from the mass of the rings? Like tidal or anything? Or is the fact that they are so spread out not allow them to have any real significant impact.

Also, how would they effect space travel and satellite orbits?

[Sarevok]

Saturn is many times larger than Earth. But saturns rings have a total mass less than its one of its small moons like mimas. So no earths comparatively much smaller ring should not exert a particular great effect on tides.

[Qwerty 42]

I'd have to imagine that, if the ring system were created by the destruction of the moon, that the uniform distribution of the mass and its associated gravity would negate the lunar effects on the tide, but I don't know that to be true.

[starslayer]

Actually, that raises a question... Would there be any effects from the mass of the rings? Like tidal or anything? Or is the fact that they are so spread out not allow them to have any real significant impact.

Such a ring would have an absolutely negligible mass compared to the Earth. There would be no significant tidal effects due to it.

Also, how would they effect space travel and satellite orbits?

The ring region would be absolutely off limits. Space travel would become much more complicated because of this, as all orbits cross the equatorial plane, meaning they would cross the rings. This would be death for any satellite or other spacecraft. LEO would still be fine (any ring particles there would burn up in short order), but GEO would probably be unusable. Interplanetary missions would have to carry some extra fuel, in order to burn around the rings, and then back into the plane of the ecliptic once they were clear of them.

[Samuel]

Unless we can mine the rings for fuel of course. Although I imagine people would be less than pleased by that.

[Havok]

Actually, that raises a question... Would there be any effects from the mass of the rings? Like tidal or anything? Or is the fact that they are so spread out not allow them to have any real significant impact.

Such a ring would have an absolutely negligible mass compared to the Earth. There would be no significant tidal effects due to it.

Also, how would they effect space travel and satellite orbits?

The ring region would be absolutely off limits. Space travel would become much more complicated because of this, as all orbits cross the equatorial plane, meaning they would cross the rings. This would be death for any satellite or other spacecraft. LEO would still be fine (any ring particles there would burn up in short order), but GEO would probably be unusable. Interplanetary missions would have to carry some extra fuel, in order to burn around the rings, and then back into the plane of the ecliptic once they were clear of them.

So things like GPS and satellite radio and cell signals would be fucked?

[cosmicalstorm]

Here's the creators Youtube channel, he seems to be new in the business of making animations of surreal scenarios (anti water device...).

Let's hope he comes up with some additional great stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/user/T0R0YD

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Wow. That is damn impressive.

We need to blow up the moon immediately! :D

Actually, that raises a question... Would there be any effects from the mass of the rings? Like tidal or anything? Or is the fact that they are so spread out not allow them to have any real significant impact.

Also, how would they effect space travel and satellite orbits?

The mass of even Saturn's ring system is miniscule. Rings are paper thin, and made up of a lot of dust and pebbles. So no, no effect on tides. However, any satellites ring-Earth would like to put in geostationary orbit would have to first go through the rings. Except rings are (broadly speaking) mostly empty space.

[starslayer]

Unless we can mine the rings for fuel of course. Although I imagine people would be less than pleased by that.

Uh... why the hell would they try mining a bunch of brecciated pebbles for rocket fuel? Why also for fusion engine fuel (if they're that advanced) or ion engine fuel? There's no way in hell mining pebbles in space would be economical.

So things like GPS and satellite radio and cell signals would be fucked?

GPS shouldn't be; though those satellites are higher than LEO, they are not much higher, certainly not high enough to encounter the C and D ring equivalents. And upon further research, it looks like stuff in GEO isn't in trouble either; the dense rings (A, B, C, D, and F equivalents) wouldn't reach GEO. The trouble, as Terwynn implied, would be insertion into GEO.

Except rings are (broadly speaking) mostly empty space.

About how dense are the A, B, and C rings? What is the average particla number density? I was unable to find a straight estimate.