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If Earth Had a Ring Like Saturn
- tgb 13y agoAlso, the article implicitly assumes that the ring is in the equatorial plane. Looking around, I found this for justification: "Ring particle orbits must lie precisely in the equatorial plane of the planet. Inclined orbits precess, or change their orientation. Very quickly, an inclined ring will soon degenerate into swarms of particles with different orbital planes." from http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/planets/resonanc.htm http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/planets/resonanc.htm This destroys my alternate world fantasies of an Earth with a ring going perpendicular to the equator and providing easy longitudinal information for early seafarers, thereby speeding up the rate of exploration and mapping.