Oh... I guess we're really stuck on Earth forever with rings. What a shame. I guess those space operas that portray Scenery Porn with being able to get on and off planets with rings is unrealistic.
Well, most space operas also have Deflector Shields or other future tech that makes this a non-issue anyway
Edited by FGHIK on Feb 9th 2022 at 5:39:03 AM
I missed the part where that's my problem.It's not just about the ring's location but its density. Saturn's rings are four billion times less massive than the planet. The Moon is one-sixth the Earth's mass, and so the ring density would be nearly 700 million times higher: probably enough to create a noticeable equatorial bulge.
A lot of that material would undoubtedly fall to Earth over time, so while it would be concentrated around the altitude at which the Moon broke up, there would be a constant infall all the way down to 200 km or so, at which point it would deorbit rapidly.
As already noted, every satellite we launch, no matter the inclination, would pass through this plane twice per orbit, and it would be all but impossible to track the infalling material to plan avoidance maneuvers. I don't know how much it would increase the probability of a fatal collision, but it would be a lot.
You might be able to launch new satellites to geostationary orbit if you could pursue a trajectory that would avoid the main mass of the ring. Any existing ones would have been fatally disrupted while the Moon was on its inward course.
All this assumes we could or would try to launch things to orbit. Our civilization would be so thoroughly wrecked that it would probably take centuries to regain the capability.
Edited by Fighteer on Feb 9th 2022 at 8:34:57 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Are There Lost Alien Civilizations in Our Past?
This video explores a fascinating idea: that there may have been other civilizations on Earth that came about millions of years ago, died out, and left no traces for us to find. It highlights one of the contributors to the Fermi Paradox: time.
As has been pointed out before, our search for other intelligent life on Earth and across the universe occupies a tiny sliver of the total ages of these things. An alien empire around Alpha Centauri that died out a mere hundred years ago would be utterly invisible to us. Complex organic life has existed on Earth for 540 million years, of which humans occupy just 300 thousand and the industrial revolution a mere 300. We have explored the universe with technology capable of detecting life for barely over 50 years. That is 0.00000036% of its lifespan.
Could there have been a native intelligent species on Earth that built an empire ten million years ago and then died out? Would we ever find it? Would another intelligent species ten million years in the future find any trace of us if we die?
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 1st 2022 at 1:20:18 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Oh, cool, I hadn't watched it yet, glad they didn't even humor the more common Ancient Aliens built everything those dumb ancient people did thing.
Secret SignatureIf there really was an ancient alien civilisation (or if we became one on this planet), there still should be chemical traces of it, even if all archaeological evidence has been wiped out (and that's a big if).
Optimism is a duty.As stated in the video, it depends on how advanced they got. If they made it past the Industrial Revolution or equivalent, then there should absolutely be traces of them: sedimentary layers showing unusual concentrations of metals, carbonization of seawater thanks to pollution, and radioactive decay products; plastic residue on the sea floor; signs of fossil fuel extraction; and mass extinction events in the fossil record.
Any civilization less developed than that would completely vanish from the geological record in well under a million years. To be clear, it would still be there, but it would be indistinguishable from natural phenomena.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 1st 2022 at 3:57:17 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The word "alien" is also a little misleading. What they really mean is a different terrestrial intelligent species.
But yeah, most of civilization would be gone very quickly. There's an entire series on this, called Life After People, and a book called The World Without Us, for starters.
Edited by Redmess on Mar 1st 2022 at 10:06:26 AM
Optimism is a duty.Notably, the same criteria apply to any hypothetical exoplanet that we may colonize in the distant future. We could find a place that is remarkably suitable for life, plop down on it, and go about our business forever unaware that an entire civilization lived and died there a mere million years ago.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Yeah, we are not going to find any billion year old ruins like in some sci-fi shows.
Optimism is a duty.Well, we could maybe find some faraway enough sats, no?
Secret SignatureThere are situations in which we could find those kinds of artifacts, but they generally require civilizations advanced enough to go to space, land on other worlds, and build extensive space-based infrastructure. As noted, satellites at sufficiently high altitudes can orbit for millions of years, and "dead" worlds like the Moon can preserve structures for a long time.
If human civilization ends and aliens visit our solar system in a million years, they would find few traces of us on Earth, but they may find our long-dead satellites in their geostationary orbits, now perturbed by the Moon and other planets, and they might find the Apollo sites and the other things we landed on the Moon. If they look very closely they might even find the Tesla Roadster from the Falcon Heavy demo mission and wonder what madman put a car into space.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 1st 2022 at 4:55:51 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Or wonder what the hell it is. They may have cars, but they could look very different from ours.
Optimism is a duty.Kurzgesagt has a hopeful message: we will fix climate change, and we should not give up hope just because polluters declare the situation hopeless.
Optimism is a duty.Right up there with skin burrowing worms.
Optimism is a duty.And botflies (dont google,seriously!)
this music plays whenever I post also a boxSee, I love this kind of stuff. It doesn't make me faint with horror and the stories emphasize just how amazing and complex our bodies are that it takes something so devious to beat them.
Edited by Fighteer on May 3rd 2022 at 11:49:08 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"It's also incredibly rare, for those worrying.
Optimism is a duty.I agree with , the more complex something is (in this case, the human body) the easier it is to break.
This reminds me of their older video about tropical parasites actually, especially that leg worm.
Secret SignatureAnd like those, evil or otherwise, I want this Amoeba killed with fire.
I missed the part where that's my problem.Interesting, seems they changed the title from overhyped to horrifying.
Secret Signature
The problem is that every trajectory to those higher orbits would have to pass through that equatorial ring at some point, unless you had a really steep trajectory.
Optimism is a duty.