I think when you're dealing with the "what if", you're delving in to the area of *scifi.

Adding video to channels (Scifi) - requested by brycewi19.

now I wish we had rings

Ever seen the goatse.cx thing? I always thought it would look like that ring.

In time, Earth will get rings.

Is it a purity ring or would we be getting married..?

*quality use of Ave Maria

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by gwiz665.

The most concentrated 3 minues of awesome I've seen all week. Fantastic.

>> ^gwiz665:
Is it a purity ring or would we be getting married..?
quality use of Ave Maria


I was thinking a space junk ring.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'earth, rings, saturn, sky, night, day, equator' to 'earth, rings, saturn, sky, night, day, equator, Schubert, Ellens dritter Gesang' - edited by Ornthoron

Ah, one can dream...

A shame that the video cuts off the music so abruptly, though.
*bravo *music

Adding video to channels (Bravo, Music) - requested by Ornthoron.

Earth is thought to have had rings, they became the Moon

What the Earth would look like with rings like Saturn?? A Pock-marked, uninhabitable, ball a' dirt.

Cool, I say we do it.

We could strategically nuke the Moon to bring some dust into orbit.

Wish they would have covered the shadow cast on the surface

*promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 7:01pm PST - promote requested by NicoleBee.

Imagine how influential the rings would have been on art, culture, and ultimately, religion.

Guess I've got to wait for the moon gate accident to get some rings...

Can you imagine how different our religions might have been if they had to explain rings? Zeus might've been second fiddle to this new Lord of the...no, I'm not going to do that. It's beneath me.

But seriously, imagine cavemen trying to make sense of it. Or the Romans. Or Kepler. Our entire theology, science, and society might be vastly different. We might have been more advanced in a "ringed" 2009. Or a ringed 2009 might look like 1940. Who knows for sure? Fascinating to think about.

Well if the most accepted theory on how we got our moon is correct - that it was once one of the many more planets our young solar system contained and one about the size of mars crashed into earth and the debris formed the moon - than at one point the earth DID have rings, but they coalesced into our moon.

Beyond that Earth simply isn't big enough for persistent rings.

Maybe someday.

Insert predictable 'what if Earth had a brown ring like Uranus' alternative title here.

If the rings were dense enough, wouldn't certain areas of the earth be frozen under the shadow? And wouldn't a race of pale, blind human/apes live there? And wouldn't they feed on the flesh of other humans? Or maybe squirrels?

>> ^shuac:
Can you imagine how different our religions might have been if they had to explain rings? Zeus might've been second fiddle to this new Lord of the...no, I'm not going to do that. It's beneath me.
But seriously, imagine cavemen trying to make sense of it. Or the Romans. Or Kepler. Our entire theology, science, and society might be vastly different. We might have been more advanced in a "ringed" 2009. Or a ringed 2009 might look like 1940. Who knows for sure? Fascinating to think about.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld

>> ^alizarin:
Wish they would have covered the shadow cast on the surface


Exactly what got me thinking...

If the rings follow the tilt of the axis, then the northern and southern hemispheres would be in darkness for winter with a spectatular 'ring-solstice' when the shadow moved past mid way through the year.

The temperature between the shadowed area, and the sunny side with massive solar reflection on it would create some interesting weather.

And if the ring wasn't equidistant to the moon, you'd see beautiful bridges of dust being drawn to the moon as it passed.

^ Very cool.

Far as science discovery goes, I like to think the inhabitants of a ringed Earth would have shed any "flat earth" ideas far far earlier than we did and I think the reason is obvious. It would also have been a simple matter to show how large and how far away the rings were. Plus, I believe man would have done anything it took to see how far the rings go, which would have led to an accelerated shipbuilding craft, which would have led to accelerated human expansion, etc, etc.

On the other hand, I can also see religious forces using it to incite a more potent fear, which would likely have tempered the above.

Oh, I love this.

All this time I thought the rings were a combination of rocks, ice and cosmic debris that gave the impression of a ring at far distances, but looking at this video it appears it's only a race stripe after all.

It really is hard to take any science (fiction or non) video seriously that starts off "How would the Earth look like..."

Fake. Those images were so obviously shopped.

Sorry to lower the tone. I was wondering what colour they would be, given that the Saturn ones seemed to be the same colour as the planet. Would ours be mainly ice and have the same colour as the oceans? Imagine that.

^Mandtis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld


I make it a point to avoid fiction but the plot sounds pretty interesting...I wish they would have made it a movie or tv series... but I guess I'll have to read it.

Several people have mentioned the "shadow of the rings". The rings would be pretty thin on an astronomical scale, so there wouldn't really be much of a shadow when the sun was behind them. I'd guess that a full "ring eclipse" would be like a slightly overcast day where you could still couldn't really look at the sun. On the other hand, the diffraction pattern might be magnificent. I guess it would depend on what the rings were made of.

Also keep in mind that the "shadow" would constantly be moving based on the time of year, so there would be no place on Earth where the eclipse was permanent.

I wish he had shown some images of the shadow that Earth would cast on the rings. The two cutoff points from the part of the rings that show brightly at night to the part that is in shadow would give a real good sense of what time it is.

And just how dark would night be at that point? There would be significantly more reflected light than what the moon gives us.

Damn, me want rings.

Max, thats one part of the what if equation. In the above renderings, chances are the ring is a solid mask effect and not actually rendered particles. The pictures from space show almost dark night in the shadow of the rings. In reality, it might not get that dark...

That being said, the rings would cast a gigantic shadow over a section of the earth on a day by day bases. While it wouldn't be a frozen tundra, it most certainly would create enough change in temperature to change the current jet streams dramatically. Not only air temperatures, but water temperatures as well. The hot and cold areas on the planet would most certainly be different, and if the rings reflected light heated up other parts of the globe, I would imagine our weather patterns would be quite violent.

Then there is the physical side of things, I am sure rocks from the ring fall into the atmosphere on a constant bases.

In a far away galaxy, there's this very earth-like planet with rings on it, just like the ones on this video. Too bad life and civilization didn't get to evolve as much, given the crazy weather messing up the atmosphere and the rings' exploding debris falling from the sky so often.

They hate rings over there.

Sounds like there's some speculation about the effect of the ring's shadow.
Do we know anything about how the shadow of Saturn's ring behaves in this regard?

>> ^ReverendTed:
Do we know anything about how the shadow of Saturn's ring behaves in this regard?


Occasional utterances of "my precious", followed by treachery and eventual karmic death.

If we had a ring around earth, how many religions would have claimed it in the name of their God?

Somewhere, in an alternate universe, is another guy looking at an Internet video of the Earth without rings, saying "Man, that's cool. I wish we didn't have rings...."

>> ^imstellar28:
^Mandtis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld

I make it a point to avoid fiction but the plot sounds pretty interesting...I wish they would have made it a movie or tv series... but I guess I'll have to read it.


the Halo video game series is loosely based on this novel

Think about it: right now, on some other planet or in some other universe, someone who lives on a ringed planet is watching a video about what their planet would be like with a crazy moon instead of boring old rings, and it's blowing THEIR mind.

I'm sure at some point in our future, all the satellites and space debris orbiting earth will coalesce into rings...

This is so cool.
It's been a while....I think it's time for another *promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Thursday, November 19th, 2009 8:05am PST - promote requested by firefly.