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Science

Earth: The Ring World 28

An anonymous reader writes "Sandia Labs is reporting on the 100,000 years or so when the Earth might have had a debris ring like Saturn. They need the rings to help explain climatic shifts and after all, what happened to all those ejected rocks when the larger meteors hit the Earth?"
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Earth: The Ring World

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  • But how would you explain the rings around saturn or jupiter? If I am not mistaken there is no solid surface for a big rock to hit to be able to eject debris.
    • Well, I think they aren't saying that this is the ONLY way rings form, just one way they could form. So the idea of Saturn having a moon break up isn't rejected.
      • Speaking of moon break up... I remember when I was watching the newest incarnation of the Time Machine the moon breakup thing seemed a little wierd. Is that actually possible for it to break up into some large pieces and smaller peices (all apparantly visible) and stay in orbit for 800k years?
        • depends on the energy release...

          Lets you placed a bomb at the core and exploded it. It would eject energy (hopefully evenly) that could sperator the parts. Gravity would tend to "pull" pieces back together.

          IF the release was large enought and non-even - then a few parts could get enough energy to "escape", but may not escape all surrounding mattter (earth) and stay in an orbit around earth, hence a new moon(s).

          IF the release was real big... maybe a new orbit around the sun.

          IF so big that it is sent to random space... most like the earth will be gone too!

          Now bury nuclear waste on the dark side and that goes cri... Damn - "Space 1999" already done.
    • But how would you explain the rings around saturn or jupiter? If I am not mistaken there is no solid surface for a big rock to hit to be able to eject debris

      Not saying this is the answer, only one possible answer: if a 'roid hits hard enough, it would likely eject some liquid and gaseous "debris", which would tend to collect in lanes, freeze, and coagulate. Voila! Rings.

  • So basically... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by YanceyAI ( 192279 ) <IAMYANCEY@yahoo.com> on Tuesday September 17, 2002 @12:29PM (#4274309)
    These guys don't have any real proof nor even claim a likelihood that there were rings. They just say it could have happened. It's one of many possible explainations for what might have caused some of Earth's atmospheric changes.

    I guess that's one way to get published.

  • If there was matter to make the rings, where is it now?
    • I guess that the debris in earth's ring(s) would have orbited the planet for a while. Then most of it would have either fallen back to earth, some maybe headed off to the moon and some would have shot off into space.
    • Our moon acts like a big scrub brush. Captured debris with very low orbits would be slowed down by our atmosphere and would eventually fall to the surface, while objects with much higher orbits would be thrown out of those orbits by our moon.

      I'm no astrophysicist, though, so don't quote me on that.
  • Visit the Hubble Heritage Project for a nice picture of Hoag's Object [stsci.edu], a beautifull looking ring galaxy (article rejected).
  • by melee ( 95039 )
    Okay, so the title isn't all one word, but I still maintain that simply having a ring doesn't make one a Ringworld. You have to be a ring, in the full Larry Niven-sense. You don't call something a Discworld that just has a disc, do you?

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