Stay with the video past the 1 minute mark to see how the rings would look from the surface.
Reposted from 2012 because it's still a cool video (I hadn't thought about the rings lighting up the nighttime sky). It's low-res but still looks pretty good in the fullscreen mode.
I wonder how they would have affected ancient navigation? Would they have helped or hindered? By hinder, I mean they would have blocked certain stars used to navigate, but maybe using the rings themselves could have aided in navigation.
ReplyDeleteAnd perhaps they would wreak havoc with communications and GPS satellites.
DeleteI was thinking the same thing. I imagine they would have helped ancient ocean navigators enormously, encouraging wide ranging exploration long before we did. This could have had a huge impact on our social and cultural interchanges in a much more profound way--both good and bad. There is evidence of far ranging trade even before the invention of the wheel, imagine if you could always know where you were-day or night. No need to rely on the stars.
DeleteOn the other hand, ladybug, the nighttime illumination might impair visualization of the constellations. And if early astronomers had difficulty seeing moons of other plants they might have been slower to abandon the geocentric model of the universe.
DeleteAwesome!
ReplyDeleteYou can ask NASA to try to nuke the Moon (like their abandoned 1959 project) ...
ReplyDeleteAnyone else notice the major shadow they cast on the earth? I wonder if that would cause frequent solar eclipse like conditions, or just create a "second night" for a certain area of the earth whenever it is aligned wrong? That would have to drastically affect temperature and vegetation if the latter were true! And what about tides? It's a beautiful concept to portray with a computer...but I'm not sure it wouldn't be something that would create a whole lot more problems than it would seem at first glance...
ReplyDeleteI was thinking the same thing ....
DeleteFascinating!
ReplyDeleteThe first thing I had to do when the animation ended was to go to Wikipedia and search for Roche Limit. Fascinating animation. I love ideas like this that turn our conventional notions on their heads. Like a map of the Earth I once saw in which the land masses and bodies of water were reversed. I couldn't figure out what the map was of for the longest time (it was artwork in a restaurant), but when it finally twigged, I couldn't stop staring at it!
ReplyDeleteFound one -
Deletehttp://bigthink.com/strange-maps/148-oh-inverted-world
- and it looks blogworthy. Tx for the idea, Anon.
In the one I remember, the actual topographic features themselves were reversed. ie. the deepest points of the oceans became the highest point of the land, etc. As I mentioned, the map was created more as artwork. It was three-dimensional (low-relief) with no labeling at all; that's why it took a while to figure out. The reversals of depth/height made it especially tricky - it really messed with your mind!
DeleteI would prefer the version you saw. The high point of land should be the Marianas trench, the deepest ocean would be the Himalayas, and that mid-Atlantic ridge should be reversed downward, not as mountains of the new land.
DeleteI do have an upside-down world map here at home; even that is a bit disconcerting to look at after a few drinks.
I'll see if I can find anything close. That was many years ago!
DeleteOn a related note, my wife has a small map she received years ago as a promotion from a Northern Canadian airline. It was titled "Our Northern Perspective" and showed Canada & the Northern United States viewed from a viewpoint high above Canada's Arctic. Talk about mess with your mind! She used it for years as part of her craft/trade show display, and it was fascinating to watch peoples' reactions to it. The names on the map were all familiar, but watching them try to fit it into a concept they could recognize....and then the Eureka! moment when they finally got it. It was a lot of fun to watch!
I wonder how rings would have shaped human culture and religion? More "(deity) ripped the sky in half" myths, I'd bet.
ReplyDeleteRepost?
ReplyDeleteAnd I would have loved a view of the rings lit in the night sky and then seeing the termination where the earth's shadow hit the rings.
I wondered too if I had posted this before, but couldn't find anything using the blog's Lijit search engine.
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