[HN Gopher] Earth may have had a ring system 466 million years ago
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       Earth may have had a ring system 466 million years ago
        
       Author : geox
       Score  : 42 points
       Date   : 2024-09-16 12:24 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.monash.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.monash.edu)
        
       | ddgflorida wrote:
       | It may have had, it may not have had.
        
         | pestatije wrote:
         | someone might have rung, someone might not have
        
       | deafpolygon wrote:
       | It also may have had intelligent life around then, too. It might
       | not have.
        
       | ck2 wrote:
       | If we ever meet any aliens with both FTL ships and a SGL
       | telescope, they are going to have some amazing photos to show us.
       | 
       | (now there's a sci-fi plot, feel free to steal that one)
        
         | unkeptbarista wrote:
         | There is such a sci-fi plot. Unfortunately, I don't recall the
         | story's title or the author. What I do recall was the use of
         | gravitational lensing (a neutron star) to observe an alien
         | world in the years just before the alien's home star went nova.
        
       | senkora wrote:
       | I really want to see an artist's rendition of what this would've
       | looked like from the surface.
        
         | jjtheblunt wrote:
         | ask copilot or midjourney or ... ?
        
         | tiborsaas wrote:
         | You are in luck :)
         | 
         | https://www.cnet.com/culture/if-earth-had-rings-like-saturn-...
        
           | rob74 wrote:
           | That doesn't look right... if the rings were around the
           | Equator, why are they perpendicular to the surface in a
           | picture of the US Capitol?!
        
             | alex_young wrote:
             | You can see a lot of the side of the rings, which means
             | they are offset by a large distance, perhaps to the
             | equator. Doesn't look too bad to my eye.
        
             | vikingerik wrote:
             | They're not perpendicular in that picture. They're
             | foreshortened - the one dark gap in the rings is narrower
             | towards the horizon (farther away from the observer). The
             | view is about right - the apparent altitude of the highest
             | point of the rings would be 90o minus your latitude, so
             | about 52o above the horizon from DC, which is roughly what
             | that image is showing (we can't really tell the field-of-
             | view span angle from a single pic.)
             | 
             | What's actually wrong is the orientation relative to the
             | Capitol. The highest point of equatorial rings would be due
             | south, and that's at the right edge of the image, so the
             | center of the image is oriented so that we're looking
             | roughly southeast. But we're looking almost directly at one
             | wall, and the rectangular building is oriented to the
             | cardinal directions, so that can't be southeast.
        
               | Aeium wrote:
               | I think it would look something like that if you were
               | looking directly east, since the distance and the
               | perspective would bring it to the vanishing point in the
               | center of the image.
               | 
               | So, from that POV, the rings would not be able to go past
               | the center of the image.
               | 
               | This view would still be possible if this is a cropped
               | down section of a larger image that was pointed slightly
               | to the left I think.
        
         | Robelius wrote:
         | I recommend a video by Joe Scott[1] that explores this What If
         | scenario. He created renders showing what rings may look like
         | from Earth and from Space. He also went into details such as
         | how seasons may have been impacted, or how the night sky
         | wouldn't be as dark because of the sun's reflections.
         | 
         | [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUztyRYQ5iU
        
       | while_true_ wrote:
       | At the rate we are going with quantities of satellites and
       | orbiting space junk we just might get new rings due to the
       | Kessler Syndrome
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
        
         | Aeium wrote:
         | There is a disproportionate amount of LEO satellites in polar
         | orbits. Particularly morning time sun-synchronous polar orbits.
         | 
         | If everything in that orbit (the most crowded one) starts
         | kessler syndroming it up, I think all the junk would mostly
         | stay in polar orbits?
         | 
         | Can any orbital dynamics experts confirm? I was kind of just
         | adjacent to that area in a job previously.
        
       | hulitu wrote:
       | > Earth may have had a ring system 466 million years ago
       | 
       | The pigs may have flown 466 million years ago. /s
        
       | compsciphd wrote:
       | no one channeling beyonce? that's how you know this isn't reddit.
       | :)
        
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