How would a culture's mythology be affected by their home planet having rings? What kind of religious or cultural significance could the rings hold?
How would a culture's mythology be affected by their home planet having rings...
Sebastian Hernandez
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Luke Fisher
Well it'd be a big blurry light blob across the sky that is sometimes but not always visible. It would probably spur religions based on astrology but it's unlikely they would know what the ring is without the aid of telescopes because you can't see the rocks with your naked eye.
Things that could be religiously important could be:
Closeness to the rings 'shadow' for a civilization.
Which side of the ring they're on being a religious schism.
The ring would greatly aid early civilizations in navigation if the ring is locked to a specific axis. You literally have a giant compass in the sky that also can tell you your position in relation to its own position.
It would probably also brighten up the night sky a bit which might have major impacts on how life evolves but who knows.
Owen Scott
Rocks no, but a ring would certainly cast a shadow and be visible depending on the sun
having an alternating night you can walk out of could be a huge influence on a species, let alone a culture. You could have wars fought over land that does or does not experience an inconsistent day/night cycle.
Nicholas James
For reference, from the surface. The Mayans went nuts over eclipse, this kind of thing would be way more
Nathaniel Lee
>Rocks no, but a ring would certainly cast a shadow and be visible depending on the sun
That really depends on the makeup of the ring, but I did mention civilizations in the shadow in my post. It wouldn't be like in your image, though. It would only be slightly dimming during the day, rings looks impressive in art but you can mostly just see them because they are composed of shiny things. They aren't remotely dense. You could pretty reliably fly through one.
>having an alternating night you can walk out of could be a huge influence on a species, let alone a culture. You could have wars fought over land that does or does not experience an inconsistent day/night cycle.
That is no how actual rings work, and as an example you can look at casini photographs of saturn which show the ring having almost no discernible shadow. You're only going to get a notable shadow in a very thin eclipse zone that would be closer to a cloud quickly passing overhead, and that's only if the ring is positioned in a way where that happens.
Nolan Lewis
People tend not to go nuts over daily occurrences. A ring based shadow zone would be a quickly passing daily or year occurrence depending on if it were based on planetary rotation or orbit. Neither one's gonna make anyone go nuts. Maybe it'd be a holiday like the solstice is.
Bentley Rodriguez
Rings don't cast shadows. If it's a solid physical object it would, but now we're into loftier sci-fi.
Nathan Sullivan
>Rings don't cast shadows
yes they do. The shadow changes each season every year.
Connor Brooks
That image has a huge amount of post processing. Most of the casini photos released to the public do. The shadow isn't nearly so stark in all the photos.
Jayden Lewis
That image was tweaked explicitly to show the shadow and highlight how it's broken up by the strata in the rings. It's not an accurate representation of what it actually looks like.