Earth - Now With Rings!
- Thread starter Mysterion
- Start date
Well, it would kinda suck when rocks from the rings fell into the atmosphere on a pretty regular basis. Any of them that are big enough would cause a bit of damage to whatever they hit. 
... and would probably bugger most of your communications, GPS, and other useful satellites.
Any orbit has to cross the equator if it's not already on the equatorial plane. The rings would play real havoc with trying to get any kind of a space program going. Either you have a real low orbit, or a real high one. Getting from one to the other is going to be a real knuckle-biter, though!
It would make for pretty sights in the sky, but it would dramatically change things here on the earth. As others have said, it would change the space program, satellites, and so forth. It would also affect the seasons in some parts of the world. During winter time, it would block the sun for bands around the earth all day long. Those bands would move with the seasons. Basically, it would make winter colder for latitudes nearer the equator, and the lack of sun would necessitate adaptation in at least some plants and animals living there.
Pretty, but wouldn't the presence of the moon prevent any such structure from forming in the first place? If not then there would surely be environmental consequences as the rings affect the tides.
...Oh yeah, and the regular meteor showers would be a bit of a bugger.
Rings wouldn't contain enough mass in a single concentration to affect tides. Only large moons can do that.
Considering the metallic slurry of crap and debris we have up there we're pretty close to having an unnatural "ring system."
J
Jetfire
Guest
A
Amaris
Guest
Used in the objective informal sense.
If there was a ring system around the planet that regularly caused meteor showers, would that cause the atmosphere to warm up?
Multiple meteor strikes on the Earth would kick up more crap into the atmosphere, making the atmosphere more dense and clouded over causing a decrease in the Earth's temperature not an increase.
Used in the objective informal sense.
Yep -- in the sense of "that you use".
Or planets. Or stars.
No, but they affect tides on other planets or their planets, respectively.
Not a big deal, just saying that the Sun, for example, affects tides on earth whereas a circlet of rings might not.
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