Earth with Rings?
An interesting result in the current issue of Earth and Planetary Science Letters, suggesting that Earth may have had a significant ring system lasting up to 40 million years during the Ordovician period, about 466 million years ago:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X24004230
The mechanism is particularly interesting, and has implications for Architect of Worlds. At present, the design sequence simply will not produce rings around a terrestrial planet comparable to Earth. In this case, the hypothesis is that a largish asteroidal body had a near-miss encounter with Earth, within the planet’s Roche limit, and broke up to form rings. Which suggests that any terrestrial planet in a system that includes at least one planetoid belt might have a temporary ring system at any given time.
I’ll have to think about this some more, but there might be some additional guidelines forthcoming to cover this case. Not to mention that a ring system would cut back on insolation and have a profound effect on planetary climate . . .
3 thoughts on “Earth with Rings?”
What prospects here for an Earth-like planet with a partial ring system, like the two segments of rings around Moth in Foster’s Humanx Commonwealth. Physically sensible? Or Plot Device?
Hmm. Not familiar with that one, but in context I’m guessing something like that would require a close-in moon to interact with the ring particles gravitationally. Otherwise they would tend to just distribute themselves evenly around the plane of the ring. Even with that kind of situation I’m not sure you would get a “partial ring” – Saturn has shepherd moons in its ring system and those don’t produce lopsided rings as such.
Good answer. I’m now imagining some mechanism with shepherd moons similar to that which produces the “braiding” seen at Saturn, except the places where the braids overlap are really long … and empty.
Either that or a large object at right angles to the ring plane that did a near miss on the planet…. a really neer miss, like almost a capture. But mechanics would probably have brought that object back around with unpleasant outcomes fairly soon.
Cheers! Stay well,
Bob P