Rodents of Unusual Size - 2009-11-20
I've always said the Earth needed to accessorize more.
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Smellvin - 2009-11-20
NASA has spent probably near a trillion dollars over the course of its existence and what have we gotten? A moon-landing PR stunt and a few pictures of stupid, dead planets. Why couldn't they have at least worked towards something awesome like this?
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Cube - 2009-11-20 Actually there are companies that spew loads of crap to the orbit, namely satellites. It won't be long until it'll look like that.
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Comatose2 - 2009-11-21 Smellvin was totally serious about everything he said.
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Frank Rizzo - 2009-11-20
we need a ring system!!!
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Desidiosus - 2009-11-20
Yeah it's nice, but then there wouldn't be many places free from light pollution. Telescopes would be useless.
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boner - 2009-11-20 You could still look in your neighbor's windows just fine.
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boner - 2009-11-20
Now what would it look like with a giant pair of balls hanging off America?
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Calamity Jon - 2009-11-20
But ... why Ave Maria?
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ProfessorChaos - 2009-11-20
The "Oh Man, that's cool" tag needs WAY more love around these parts.
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HarrietTubmanPI - 2009-11-20
It's an interesting thought.
For one, we would have probably known the Earth was round several thousand years before Eratosthanes, and the ideas like the firmament and all of that could have been completely different.
I'm wondering how different religion would have been if there was something even more prominent to observe in the sky than the Sun. Would we now have religions ignoring the solstice? Or would they still be around - but different. Would they see the constant arc in the sky as a warning or blessing? And, would the fear and superstition devoted to night and the new/full moon be devoted to the ever looming presence of the Holy Arc?
I also wonder about how the rings would have gotten there, since the formation of them around the Roche-Limit if observed by sentient man in the last 50,000 years could have spawned another religion.
And, finally, how much more humble our species would be knowing that there will be a time when the rings could come back to Earth - and that we must work together in time to make sure it doesn't wipe us out.
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Keefu - 2009-11-23 shut the FUCK UP
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simon666 - 2009-11-20
Eh, two or three generations later people would be like "So what?". I mean, how often are people going "Holy shit! There's a moon, Earth has a moon! A FUCKING MOON MADE OF EARTH DEBRIS!!!!"
People would soon not give a shit about the rings for the same reason people don't go camping.
However, this is a fun exercise in imagination that I enjoyed.
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HarrietTubmanPI - 2009-11-20 The modern world is different from the ancient one.
Do recall that people once worshipped the moon and worshipped the sun - and would riot in the case of an eclipse or anything unexpected. It's also possible a supernova caused the birth of Christianity as well.
To paraphrase Carl Sagan - the cosmos has an extraordinary effect on our civilization.
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C. Eloi Marx - 2009-11-20
Wouldn't the light deflected by the rings provide a degree of global cooling. Gentlemen, we now have a reason to embark on this pointless (but awesome) endeavour.
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sosage - 2009-11-20
Would the rings still have the illusion of being one flat form from our perspective? Would we be close enough to notice huge chunks of rock? Maybe I just don't understand Saturn's rings and astronomy. Off to wiki...
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j lzrd / swift idiot - 2009-11-20
Wouldn't the night shot have earth's shadow blocking the ring partially? Also it would be bright as fuck out all night long? And there'd be a shadow belt shifting with the earth's tilt on the sun-facing side constantly? Would astronomy be where it's at with that much light all night?
At what point would technology be needed to advance to before we had any idea how many stars were out there, let alone a galaxy, let alone multiple galaxies? Because I'm thinking those rings would be really fucking bright at night.
Ain't it cool.
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MrBuddy - 2009-11-20 Yeah everyone kind of forgot about the parts of the Earth that would be in permanent darkness. If the band didn't move no plants would grow there, making life in that area really difficult.
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TeenerTot - 2009-11-20 I don't think there wouls be "permanent darkness" due to the axial wobble.
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Chibisuke - 2009-11-21 Well it looks like the pole of the rings is over Canada, so I guess we'd need the technology to travel to Canada. I'd say by 2030 or so we'll have the tech to visit that barren wasteland.
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j lzrd / swift idiot - 2009-11-21 The axial wobble of the earth, if I'm correctly picturing this model in three dimensions, would put the shadow band on the same yearly cycle as the solstices and equinoxes.
During the solstices, the shadow would be at maximum thickness and at its furthest north or south. Moving back towards the spring and autumn, past a certain day the shadow band area would get so thin, it would no longer appear wide enough to block the sun's entire diameter, and the sun would start peeking out and making it look like a sunrise playing out for hours and hours and days and days. It pretty much would be effectively gone on equinoxes, even standing right under the thing on the equator. Then the axial tilt would take us into summer or winter and it would be a slow sunset.
I really wish this animation had more models, or was put together by a nerdier beardier bunch of physics and astronomy nerds, my brain isn't too good at visualizing what the moon and ring interactions would be like, or any of that. I'd at least like to see what a full orbit would do to the shadow band on the sun facing side, but alas, naught. My mind's eye has glaucoma.
The pictures were pretty, even if that shot at night was obviously missing the big chunk of earthshadow cutting into it.
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j lzrd / swift idiot - 2009-11-21 Chibisuke: Look again. The pole of the rings is over the north pole. Or maybe you were joking about the ring poles being over canada, I can't tell.
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Wombles - 2009-11-22 More importantly, lets be generous and say it cuts effective solar radiation by 1%.
= massive ecological (and probably climatological, very hard to predict) disaster.
Myriad of other severe problems too... "science" tag is inappropriate.
Also kinda pretty.
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Caminante Nocturno - 2009-11-20
Science is the mankind's greatest artform.
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memedumpster - 2009-11-20
If a comet hit our rings, that could suck really bad. Also, imagine the billboards that would be projected on those suckers.
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Robert DeNegro - 2009-11-20
Let's face it. If we had rings we'd be as bored with it as we are with our singular moon and the peanut gallery would be clambering about how bitchin it would be to be knocked 90 degrees off axis or something else we're not -but still...
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Hekmatyar - 2009-11-20
Those rings would be great only for one weekend.
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KnowFuture - 2009-11-20
Seeing as how the night sky would have been completely different and we wouldn't be able to see many stars through a lot of the night sky, how would navigation have been developed?
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j lzrd / swift idiot - 2009-11-21 Garcet is completely correct.
In fact, if you guys want to see at a glance that the pictures here were chosen to make the rings look pretty, and this wasn't done by real beardy academic types, click to 2:20.
Australia: Ring arch is twisted which direction?
Spain, THE VERY NEXT PICTURE: ring arch is twisted which direction?
WHICH OF THESE PICTURES IS WRONG?
hint: Spain and Australia are not in the same hemisphere!
show your work.
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Toenails - 2009-11-21 Somebody's making a homebrew D&D campagain based off this video?
I call dibs on the 13th-level Fighter/Swashbuckler who owns a ship!
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longwinded - 2009-11-26 I do not understand your argument, jl/si - the australian picture appears to be of someone looking east and seeing the arc to the north, while the madrid picture appears to be someone looking southwest and seeing it to the south - what do you mean by twist in the ring arch?
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j lzrd / swift idiot - 2009-11-28 Oh shit, now I'm the one who can't conceptualize properly. Egg on my face.
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j lzrd / swift idiot - 2009-12-14 Oh that didn't come out right. <----- This guy can't do HTML, and he also isn't an astronomer and has an imagination that would never be defined by its plasticity or lack there-of.
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Syd Midnight - 2009-11-20
I'd like to see how little kids draw it. You could tell what latitude a little kid was from by how they drew the sky.
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Time Travel Mishap - 2009-11-20
If we had a ring around the planet wouldn't there be giant chunks of rock coming lose and making it through the atmosphere all the time? by all the time i mean like every 30 or 40 years that is not every few minutes.
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Chibisuke - 2009-11-21
We could have these rings if mankind would choose to blow up the moon.
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Toenails - 2009-11-21
As long as we are speculating...
I'd like to imagine that the space race would have been tons more explosively interesting.
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dora's cough - 2009-11-21
:')
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PurpleXVI - 2009-11-21
Fuck you, moon. The Earth needs its bling.
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Broose182 - 2009-11-22
Neat.
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chumbucket - 2009-11-23
we're getting there, in another 60 years we'll have a significant ring of garbage
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Maru - 2010-10-12
Earth will you marry me? -- The Universe
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Squeamish - 2010-12-09
:D
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