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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nyeshet" data-source="post: 2339307" data-attributes="member: 18363">Very nice, until you realize that meteors are falling with alarming regularity - perhaps every other day around the equator. The image of the ring as seen from the ground would not look like a gentle ring or even a mass of multitudes of mini-'moons'. Well, yes, it might seem like that latter at its most outter visible edge. But its inner edge would seem to burn. Rarely would an hour pass without a flash of light as a house size chunk of rock - or larger - falls from the sky, burning up as it does so. I imagine the entire inner edge of the ring would seem to shimmer faintly from the near continuous burn up of rock ranging from the size of your finger to the size of your body. The land at the equator would resemble a moon - especially if the world is rather dry. Pock marked from thousands of asteroid and meteor strikes, the heat from the impacts would more than make up for the shade offered by the continuous cloud of meteors surrounding the equator - at least at a local level. I imagine the lack - or at least extreme irregularity - of heat(ing) at the equator might partially throw off the whole seasonal shift in winds, etc. Oh, and I seem to recall the moon being something like 1/6 the size of the earth but only 1/81 the mass. Perhaps I mis-remember? That's about 1.23% - a major difference from your stated 25%. Of course, even that is massive compared to the ring. The main problem with a ring for stability of obliquity is that the mass is not centralized - it is spread out over a massive volume of space. As such, it offers little if any stability, especially since it is continuously shrinking as its pieces fall to the world below. Given a few score million years any ring formed around a world like the earth would mostly vanish - at least to a low enough level not to be visible from the surface of the planet. [Edit]Oh, I see a few issues (moon mass, ring inadequecy, etc) have already been dealt with. Still, it is fun to think about the realistic consequences of having a ring around a world. Eberron should be a lot more interesting - at least around the equator. ^^[/Edit]</blockquote>

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