• Patapon Enjoyer@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Yeah, a planet that’s just like Earth but with a ring system would be dope af

    Though maybe it’s impossible to have rings and a cool bigass moon because gravity or something? Physicists, help a homie out.

    • Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      8 months ago

      Not a scientist but I imagine 1 moon or more would more or less attract all the matter that would otherwise become a ring?

      • samus12345@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Saturn has 146 moons and the largest, Titan, is 50% larger than ours, but also farther away from the planet.

          • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
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            8 months ago

            Saturn’s rings are quite temporary on the time scale that planets exist at. They might only have been formed in a collision between moons 100 million years ago, and will most likely disappear in some 100 million years. This is a very brief period compared to the age of the planet.

            So rings are likely quite an unstable formation, large moon or not, and we’re lucky to have Saturn nearby right now. It is theorized that Earth used to have two moons that collided to form the current one and presumably also rings of debris that have since disappeared.

    • AceCephalon@pawb.social
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      8 months ago

      Rings at a very basic level tend to be moons that could be, or could have been, if they were higher in orbit such that gravity wouldn’t tear the moon apart. They can also be from moons or even planets colliding, the debris in the aftermath forming the rings, which if not too low in orbit, could reform into a moon as well, which seems likely to be how our own moon formed.