What If Earth Had Rings Like Saturn

What if Earth had rings like Saturn? We scaled Saturn's main rings to Earth and calculated what they would look like from the equator, the tropics, New York, London and the Arctic, how their shadow would darken winter in the subtropics, how they'd light up the night and make rocket launches harder - and we look at the real evidence that Earth may have had a ring 466 million years ago. Where would YOU live to see the rings best? Tell us in the comments! The rings in this video are Saturn's main rings scaled to Earth's size (C, B, A rings, from ~1,500 km to ~8,000 km above the surface). Their position in each city's sky, the shadow bands and Earth's shadow on the rings are calculated from real geometry; the city scenes are illustrations made by adding computed rings to real photos. CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 0:34 Where would the rings be? 1:36 Thin as paper 2:22 The view from the ground 3:51 Ring-lit nights 4:31 Shadows and seasons 5:04 Winter in the shade 5:50 Meteors and rockets 7:00 Did Earth once have a ring? 8:05 Rings don't last forever 8:35 Outro SOURCES Tomkins, A. G., Martin, E. L., Cawood, P. A. (2024). Evidence suggesting that earth had a ring in the Ordovician. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 646. O'Donoghue, J. et al. (2019). Observations of the chemical and thermal response of 'ring rain' on Saturn's ionosphere. Icarus. / NASA Goddard: "Saturn is losing its rings at worst-case-scenario rate" (2018). NASA Cassini mission; NASA Saturn fact sheet. Photos: Wikimedia Commons, by DLR German Aerospace Center (CC BY 2.0); Diliff (CC BY 3.0); ESO (CC BY 4.0); Francisco Anzola (CC BY 2.0); Kim MyoungSung (CC BY 2.0); Lars Tiede (CC BY 2.0); M. Lewinsky/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 (CC BY 4.0); VynedJ (CC BY 4.0). Public domain / CC0 images by Bill Ingalls, Brody Wesner, Carol M. Highsmith, Christiane Leister / Leister Expedition Go North 2022, DvTor8303, Gary Todd, Joselodos, Librarybell, NASA, NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute, NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI / color composite by Gordan Ugarkovic, NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute, NASA ICE, NASA, ESA, and H. Weaver and E. Smith (STScI, NASA/Danielle Johnson, NASA/JPL, NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/Cornell, NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute, NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/University of Leicester, NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute, NASA/JPL/University of Colorado, NPS Natural Resources, National Map Seamless Server, Official SpaceX Photos, Pedro Kümmel pedrokummel, Scott Kelly, Wilfredor. Full credits with licences in the pinned comment. Globe: NASA Blue Marble & Black Marble (public domain). Ring renders, diagrams and composites: own work. Narration: Kokoro TTS. Music: original. #WhatIf #Space #Saturn