As the effective centre of a symmetric ring system would be coincident with the centre of the planet, there wouldn't be any tidal effect on the planet.
Earth - Now With Rings!
- Thread starter Mysterion
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Plus; the rings might cast a vast shadow on the planet below.
I actually haven't been able to get that video to load until earlier today, but, yeah, something like that is bound to have a chilling effect on the planet.
Nice. They put more thought into it than the guys doing the VFX for Insurrection.
Looks like a pretty good video.
I would have liked to see in one of the night visions the terminator where the rings fall into Earth's shadow. This beautiful curve coming out of the horizon that just suddenly ends in midsky. (more likely, darken considerably, but it would still look totally cool).
And, by the way, in some versions I've read of the accretion theory, the Earth may have had rings at one time.
I would have liked to see in one of the night visions the terminator where the rings fall into Earth's shadow. This beautiful curve coming out of the horizon that just suddenly ends in midsky. (more likely, darken considerably, but it would still look totally cool).
And, by the way, in some versions I've read of the accretion theory, the Earth may have had rings at one time.
I assume that the Earth must have had a short-lived ring system following the impact that formed the Moon. I expect that the Moon swept up most of the debris in its gradual drift away from the Earth.
Entropy's a bitch, ain't it?
Going off topic here... One of the ways I have read of warming Mars to begin terraforming would be to induce many meteor impacts onto that planet.
So educate me, why would this warm Mars but cool Earth?
Clouds reflect heat, on both sides. They reflect heat coming from the ground, and they also reflect heat coming from the sun. If you have no clouds at all, it gets cooler, because at night the heat energy can dissolve without any problems. And ground heat dissolves very fast (which gets obvious in deserts. Incredibly hot at day, but freezing temperatures during the night). Ever noticed how a clear night is colder than a clouded night? Now this means that a certain percentage of cloud cover keeps the temperatures stable. Not necessarily warm, but stable. With cloud coverage, you decrease the temperature difference between hot at day and cold at night.
So, now if there are too many clouds, it blocks the sunlight. Which means temperatures at day decrease. It's a question of balance. Clouds can help keeping atmosphere warm, but if the coverage is too dense, it also blocks sunlight.
Mars' atmosphere isn't dense enough to retain heat and it has zero cloud cover so any heat it does take in just goes right away. I've never heard of the meteor impacts on Mars (I've only heard of doing a greenhouse effect) but doing such a thing would be less harmful to Mars than it would us.
On Mars it'd serve to give Mars some cloud cover, or a denser atmosphere, that could trap heat. It may not make Mars more temperate but it'd probably make temperatures there a bit more hospitable. It's all about a balance in density. Mars' atmosphere is a fraction of the density ours is.
Do you know how a thermos works? One of the way it works is that between the inner cylinder (where the beverage goes) and the outer shell there's a vacuum just like there's a vacuum between us and the sun in space. Vacuum is an insulator. So Mars' own "atmosphere" is insulating it from any heat energy it can get from the sun. Making Mars' atmosphere more dense (by kicking up debris with meteor impacts) would serve to raise it's temperature by making there being more "stuff" in Mars' atmosphere to be warmed.
Earth, however, has developed a balance between having too little atmosphere and having too much atmosphere. Our atmosphere cannot be any denser and a meteor impact would kick up stuff that'd block the sun and thus its solar energy.
Mars loses any and all energy, including energy made from its own core, through its atmosphere so if it had a denser atmosphere some sunlight may be blocked but the net effect of allowing Mars to keep it's own internal heat would probably result in a gain. But I doubt we'd be looking at incredible temperatures and just a place that'd be a bit closer to the more hospitable areas of Alaska, barely.
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