[Ast] The Imaginary Ring Of Earth

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A sample article from #Planetarium. Original document was compiled in early 2014.
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Saturn Eclipse, Image from NASA APOD

The picture above shows Saturn,the gas giant planet with the most significant ring system in our planetary neighborhood.

What if our planet Earth had a ring system, from it's very beginning?

Though it probably wouldn't be called as a "ring" - as it surround our, commonly perceived, flat world. Will the ring make our lives more enjoyable?

Its structure and color will be widely admired. Orbiting our massive silicate planet,the ring's different parts have different velocities, which correlate only to their orbital radii.

Over the equator, we can only a catch sight of thick line. Shining over the places no one had approached, it might have helped the voyagers a lot

The shadows change their latitude since the planet moves around the sun with a angle of 23°15' from its own rotation plane.
Geographers could be studying them. Maybe people need to recognize ring layers.

Agriculture and plants' lives must be, sometimes, more difficult - maybe only slight light spots can be delivered to the ground through the ring.

On the Equinox of spring or autumn,the shadow gathers to form a spectacular line on equator.

     

However, even if we once had a ring, the gravity from the Sun and the tidal-locked Moon would soon take it all apart, catapulting every piece into space or to the ground.

Whatever... Let’s go back

Timing at nights became easier, as if our shadow were a large clock.

When I was composing this essay in Jinan during the 2014 Spring Festival, I was also imaginatively celebrating the return of sunshine.

Through the discussions and of course, revisions,

I find that an imagination like this is not only concerned with what appears to be strange.

Nature in this essence, is far from predictable.

Things run the same way all the time;

stories originate from all kinds of initial conditions that vary subtly.

All these assumptions and imaginations,

though they are more beautiful and far less detailed than reality, are similar to the very world in which we live.

Fictional or not things can be all gone.

Bonus picture: What I used to imagine as Earth's appearance, in billions of years, after it has immersed in the remnants of our sun.

English version updated Apr,26 2014
Change log v1.1: Grammar and vocabulary enrichment. Contents are copyrighted except marked ones

Picture credits: Yourong Wang. programmed and generated from Space Engine, the free 3d Space Simulator

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