How would a culture's mythology be affected by their home planet having rings...

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?

Other urls found in this thread:

saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/raw-images?order=earth_date desc&per_page=50&page=7&targets[]=SATURN
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

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.

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.

For reference, from the surface. The Mayans went nuts over eclipse, this kind of thing would be way more

>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.

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.

Rings don't cast shadows. If it's a solid physical object it would, but now we're into loftier sci-fi.

>Rings don't cast shadows

yes they do. The shadow changes each season every year.

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.

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.

saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/raw-images?order=earth_date desc&per_page=50&page=7&targets[]=SATURN

These are the raws of our actual photos of Saturn.

These are beautiful, thank you.

Well the first thing is that you're going to be seeing near constant shooting stars as stuff falls out of the rings. Almost all of it will be small enough to burn up, but you'll probably see a higher than Earth number of impacts as well, these won't be big enough to cause major damage, similar to size you see meteorite hunters find.
I imagine that kind of thing would either encourage thinking and understanding of space more, or cause a bit of religious interest in "messengers from heaven."

I'm imagining a religious culture that believes for a very long time that they can see the heavens, that the gods live in the rings, whatever they choose to explain it with. The other celestial bodies might be visitors or invaders.

As another user pointed out, you've got a very handy compass if you're travelling against the ring's axis, and it shouldn't be too hard to figure out the angular travel as well. The only issue would be travelling exactly parallel to the rings. So long distance navigation would be easier than Earth.

Invention of magnification lenses would cause an immediate shakeup, since even fairly basic ones would show that the rings were made of discrete material. Maybe not that big a surprise, maybe one so big it shakes up the whole culture.

Keep in mind they would probably still have moons and in all likelihood the sun is still a larger and more meaningful single discrete object in the sky so the planets not gonna be totally ring-crazy all the time.

Maybe because Saturn gets 1% of the illumination Earth gets. Shadows through a diffuse structure like Saturns rings are going to be pretty subtle.

At Earth-like levels of illumination, however...

If a ring was subtle and only visible directly under very specific conditions, it would take on religious significance as the Arch of Heaven or similar.
Even a ring always or mostly visible might become the equivalent of the Moon for determining a calendar, moods of the gods or of those born under a particular Aspect, or as a warning/timing mechanism for earthly occurrences (say a night every season when the nocturnal dangers don't come out because it's too bright).

You can literally see the ring shadows in the image you shared.

>the LOSSt planet.jpg

Consider the cultural depiction of the aurora as the "dance of the spirits" by northern North American groups as a potential analogue

Aren't all planets with rings gas giants where solid life as we know it cannot live?

Any planet can have rings. They just don't last forever. Earth have had rings more than once.

Having an arch in the sky could drive exploration, as civilizations travel to find the end of it. Seeing the rings from different angles could help people measure distances and formulate stuff like how high the rings are. If the rings contained larger rocks, it could help keen eyed astronomers (or after some sort of telescope is invented) to see them more clearly and spark explanations on how rocks hover in air.

How would you call Earth's first orbital ring?

Donald J. Trump orbital ring.

I'd call it Jörmungandr if that isn't already taken.

It would be a semi-constant navigation aid for north-south travel. As much as Polaris was to ancient seafarers.

Ouroboros

Not just N-S, it would help immensely even with E-W travel by just looking at how high it is over the horizon

True that.

>The Great Bridge, from upon which the Gods watch over us. No one has reached either side, for we must be born across the seas by The Boatmistress at the end of our lives.

>So vast is The Bridge, that should someone stretch her tendrils as high as she can never could she reach them. For the Gods live above the sky, from which they pluck stars to send down as gifts to the worthy... or to punish the unworthy.

>Take heed little one... for throughout your life, always will you be able to look up and see that the Gods and your ancestors are watching down upon you from The Bridge.


1500-2000 years later

"Crazy fundies keep on attacking the space center, will they give it a rest?"

Eberron

More please

bob

What if the world in question orbited another planet, and the world happened to orbit within its parent planet's rings?

bump

I love this kind of thread!

This is good.

What about an inflated Earth? Normal gravity, but hundreds of times the surface area, hundreds of continents, and oceans that make the entire normal Earth look like an archipelago.
Do you think it's possible that a large portion of the planet would remain uncharted until 20th century equivalent?
>insert Dobson reference here

So Russia built it?

No, China. Russia just funded it and US commissioned it. Europe supplies some ridiculously expensive gadget, so they can boast about being part of the project.

>implying it wasn't paid for by Mexico

Wrong. Mexico both built and founded it,

Finally, Something That Can Fit Your Mother

Jews think Saturns ring is jesus' circumsized foreskin ... so a culture of people cutting each others dicks?

>Gods of creation live on the sky roads

>When we die we go to heaven, which exists on above the earth

>Sun god slayed a sky serpent to separate the sky from the water. His skin is floating above the earth.

>Ethnic groups that live under the rings view those from the north or south of them to be evil or barbarous.

>A lot more ring iconography, either as jewelry or clothing

>Doomsday prophocies of the ring falling and slicing the world in half, dividing the earth

>More mathematically inclined cultures plan cities in parallel with the rings. Anything not constructed parallel or horizontal of those lines is heretical and obscene.

>Some groups of hunter gatherers send their exiles to walk the "Heaven's Walk", where they follow the rings across the earth until they find the realm of the god's, seeking redemption. May explain why this group is found in other continents across the globe.

>A lot more meteorite weaponry, usually reserved for use by holy clerics or the royal family

>Some areas, due to the tilt and angle of the rings, are in perpetual darkness. This is usually considered a forbidden land, a place where the spirits go after death, where deadly things live. Some coming of age rituals involve crossing the darklands and returning with a slain animal not seen in the daylands.

"Nystara, the wanderer, travels on her starry path every night. She searches for her lover, who said he would return and meet her on this road - but he never returned. She marches its length every week, trying to catch a glimpse of him, a sign - but none is ever to be found."

A bright nova in the night sky a couple hundred years to have birth to the story of her lover who went away as the bright 'star' disappeared gradually from being bright as shit.
Far in the future, an orbiting station ends up in a similar place and is called Lovers Station

That was mormons or jehova's witnesses, I thought?

>physical object
You're talking shit, like 90% of rings are composed of trapped debris from impacts with the moons, clumps of ice, and left over material from the planet's formation. What did you think they were?