Questions tagged [planetary-rings]
For questions about rings and their effects on the world and its people.
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What would the sky look like in the SHADOW of planetary rings?
Background: I'm writing a nomadic society that lives in the shadow of their planet's rings. These rings are as wide as possible to grant them the biggest shadow. The planet has an incredibly long year ...
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Can there be a moon within a planetary ring?
A simple question, could a moon exist and stay whole if it was inside the ring of asteroids orbiting a planet? And as a side note, would it create a kind of bulge in the ring where the asteroids ...
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Does a planet's axial tilt and seasonal progression affect a planetary-ring system, as seen from the planet surface?
Ok, so I have determined my world can keep it's planetary ring system. YAY! Now I just need to clarify once and for how it would look like from the planet surface. I think I have it worked out, but ...
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How to explain planetary rings pulsating?
A spacecraft enters an unnamed system and spotted a gas giant with a pulsating planetary ring, it glows bright intermittently. What natural phenomenon could be responsible for such brilliant display? ...
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How can I tell what my ringed planet will look like from the surface?
I'm considering writing a fantasy novel which takes place on a world with a ring. This ring is a very important part of the story, and I therefore want to be as accurate as possible in describing what ...
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What is a good reason not to mine a planetary ring?
Most planetary rings are rich in water in the form of ice, especially now we are running low on freshwater reserves on Earth. Imagine someone discovered a huge chunk of meteorite consisting of a ...
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Could a gas giant's moon have stable rings?
The planet orbits a supermassive gas giant, almost double the size of Jupiter. But the planet orbiting it is also supposed to have rather large rings in my story.
Question: Is it possible for a moon ...
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How would a planetary ring react to a magnetic field?
So for the story I'm writing, I'm designing is a gas dwarf with a very strong magnetic field and a planetary ring with a slightly inclined orbit. However, the rocks within the ring are very sensitive ...
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Ringed Planet: The shadow's effect on fauna
I am writing a fantasy novel centered on an Earth-like planet with icy rings like Saturn. This question deals with certain effects of having such a ring system. Assume the planet is Earth, the rings ...
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How to navigate a ringed planet at night?
I'm working on a story set in an Earth-like world but with rings (say, proportionately similar to Saturn's). I'm trying to get a solid handle on how these rings would affect the sky. For the ...
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Effects of Rings - Debris?
I've been thinking about writing a fantasy novel set on an earth-like world with Saturn-like rings. I've been doing some research here by looking up questions about worlds with rings, of which there ...
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Rings made out of water? [duplicate]
There have been numerous questions on this site about moons being composed entirely of water. However, is it possible for a planet to have rings made out of water?
I think that the ring would ...
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What's the minimum possible size for a planet to have rings?
How small can a planet with rings be? It doesn't have to be inhabitable, but it must be a planet (not a dwarf planet).
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How to put satellites in orbit on my ringed world?
In my world there are rings, these rings are around 9.5 meters tall and a little around 5000 kilometres wide. Their closest point is a little over 12,000 kilometres away from the surface and under 17,...
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Earth with planetary ring
I imagine that if we could transform the Moon into a beautiful planetary ring around Earth, wouldn't it be spectacular! Problem is the feasibility. Are there any practical solutions?
Option
I think ...
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Could a Moon have its own "Rings", like Saturn's, without the Host Planet having them? [duplicate]
I'm currently fleshing out a sci-fi universe and always looking for fun new locales to populate it with, and I saw this phenomenon in a video game I've been playing recently, and it made me curious... ...
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How long would it take for a earth-based ring to break up given solar and lunar gravitational forces?
In my world-building project, a decades long orbital conflict has resulted in the trashing of Earth's orbit with massive amounts of debris, shipwrecks, and space junk. However, after an anomalous ...
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Habitability of a Low Axial Tilt Planet with a Planetary Ring
So, I'm creating a world for a science fantasy setting. It has magic and such, but since it's mainly taboo to use it, I want the world's climate to be based on hard scientific facts.
My world has an ...
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Implications of cigar-shaped bodies having rings?
In my Conworld's system, There is a porous asteroid large enough to be a dwarf planet (but it's mass is too small to pull it into a spherical shape) that has rings. How they got there, nobody knows. ...
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What would the Total Eclipse look like on a planet with rings?
The recent total eclipse, got me thinking about how it would look in my world.
I have a earth-sized planet with a ring system, a couple of small moons and 1 or 2 bigger moons.
How would a planetary ...
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Could humanoid life survive the violent formation of a planetary ring system?
The deepest mythological archetypes in my Earth-like world hint at a wondrous and terrible disaster in the ancient past. ~10 tya a celestial body (perhaps a small, second moon, or a wandering asteroid,...
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Verifying Habitability/ Feasibility of my Conworld
Right, lets try this again.
I'm making a planet for a book I'm writing. I want to know if the planet I outline here is scientifically probable, able to support life, and what the climate would ...
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Is a ring planet possible?
No planet in the center, just a large O shape made up of large chunks of rock that in and of itself itself orbits a sun, as if it were a planet (as distinct from a ringworld). I know most of the time, ...
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Can a planet with rings support life?
Is it at all possible for complex life to evolve and exist on a planet with rings?
I assume the rings would have to be rock, since if the planet is to support life, it will have to be in the habitable ...
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Can a habitable planet have rings? [duplicate]
So, quite simply, is it possible for a planet in the habitable zone of its sun to possess rings like a gas giant? Naturally they would not be made of ice, but if this planet had a small moon which ...
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Age of sail navigation tools for a planet with a ring
Alright so I have a planet where the locals are about seventeenth century level of technology, meaning sailing ships and single shot black powder weapons are the standard and there is plenty of ocean ...
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Planetary rings: colour of the rings and sky
What colour will planetary rings made up of dust and rock (not ice) appear to be? Would there be a difference looking from space and from the surface?
More importantly, how will the rings affect the ...
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Could this uniquely shaped planet exist?
Now, I know that planets can’t be disc-shaped. However, if a relatively small planet had a very strong magnetical pull, could it have a ring system that could make the planet from afar seem disc-...
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How can mankind duplicate the rings of Saturn for Earth?
With today's technology could mankind create a system of rings similar to Saturn composed of different masses of water particles and silicate minerals that would freeze? How could mankind accomplish ...
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What motivation would people have for mining planetary rings?
People have proposed mining the moon for Helium-3 and mining asteroids for gold, iridium, and other precious metals. Suppose we have the means to do so in an economically-viable manner. We've got ...
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How does a world with rings expand into space
In Artifexians newest video he discusses how you can have a habitable near earth world that still has rings. Fast forwarding to the end of the video, he points out that due to their pull on any ...
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Effects of Rings: Tides
In my earth-like world, there is one thing that separates it from Earth; this world has a single rocky ring, around 10.3 meters thick, 5(ish) miles wide.
In our own world we know that without an ...
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Compass on a Ringed, Earth-like Planet
Is it necessarily a given that a compass (as they magnetically function on Earth) could be made to function similarly on an alternate, Earth-like, ringed planet?
Another way of asking: is it feasible ...
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Are Saturn's rings a safe place for adolescent space-hoppers?
Are Saturn's rings a safe place for adolescent space-hoppers?
As you know, space-hopper toys are based on the real-life creature. These are roughly balloon shaped and have two "horns".
The ...
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How stable would a ring be around a tidally locked planet?
So I am working on my species which I requested help with a few days ago. They are large salamander like creatures that need large bodies of water to survive and the planet they live on has about 80-...
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Are multidirectional rings on a planet possible?
So I'm looking to add rings to a planet, but I'd like it to appear to be an atom (like a 3-D model with the electron trails) using the dust and debris from collisions long past.
My idea is to weave ...
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Are elliptical rings feasible?
Around a rocky planet or small gas giant, could there be a system of rings that follow an elliptical orbit? I have used a gravity simulator (this one) to test it, but the way it handles its particles ...
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Reality check: infalling bombardment from rings around Earth, would the planet still be inhabitable?
I'm writing a story where the Moon became a ring.
I've seen plenty of discussion in other questions' comments about feasibility, and how turning the Moon into a ring would cause a true Apocalypse. ...
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How would you build RingWorld? [closed]
Larry Niven's RingWorld is supposed to do a complete revolution around its central star in a matter of days: about 9 days, assuming a ring of Earth size orbit, providing a 9.81m/s² "gravity" ...
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The Tropic of Ice: how cold might it get in a long-lasting planetary ring shadow?
I am working on my second novel set on a ringed Earth-like planet. Compared to Earth it has a slow orbit (19 Terran years) and a low axial tilt resulting in minimal seasonal variance. The low axial ...
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Can I have a planetary liquid or gas ring system?
My space colonists have found a home in the ring system of a (maybe chthonian) gas giant. The rings are based on Saturn's in terms of appearance, but can they be made of gases or liquid (maybe ...
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How should planetary rings be to cause permanent and heavy thunderstorms on the full equatorial area of the planet?
The world in question is an Earth-like planet, with, for plot reasons, a permanently ongoing thunderstorm all over its equatorial line, in such way that's impossible to come across before a 1920-50-...
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Consequences of a two-mooned system losing the one closest to the planet?
I was thinking of adding rings to my planet and I wanted to give them a proper origin, so I thought about getting rid of the moon closest to the planet since I would still have one and it could make ...
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Reality Check - Collision of a Moon prevented by turning it into a ring
In my current fantasy story, I have an earth-like planet with one large difference: it has a planetary ring. I would like this ring to be large and visible. I've been using Saturn's rings as a ...
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Can a planet with chaotic rotation have more than one ring rotating in differents axis? [duplicate]
Let's say that planet earth have a big explosion . An explosion generated in earth big enough to change the planet shape. Making earth having a chaotic rotation like Hyperion leaving water and rocks ...
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How stable would partial planetary rings be on Lagrange points?
Context
There's a comparison to what I'm talking about on a larger scale: Jupiter's got its Trojans and Greeks, and Earth does have them too. Those are more or less loose and sparse groups of ...
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Debris from a ringed planet, and believability
I am writing a fantasy book, so while I am not too concerned with being completely scientifically accurate, I would at least like for aspects of my world to feel believable, so as to not take the ...
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Forming a dust ring around asteroid Ceres
Is it possible, due to asteroid mining activities, for a space-fairing civilization to produce a dust ring around a very large asteroid (Ceres)?
In my world, there is a lot of ore processing being ...
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How could you have a Super Saturn (J1407b) like planet with rings in a system with life?
I would like my world's solar system to have a super saturn (J1407b) like planet with ring system for astrological reasons. How could I have this during a "contemporary age" (Cenozoic ...
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Ringed planet: Reality check on ring-shadow visuals [duplicate]
This is one of a collection of questions about a ringed planet I am considering using as the setting for a fantasy novel. I would like the ringed planet to be as scientifically accurate as possible, ...