Ok so my group has asked me to do something unique with the world that they havent seen before. So, i sat and thought basically all night over a bunch of vodka, with the aid of a friend i came up with adding a ring to the world, and possibly a second moon...ill explain them both.
The Ring - Ok im not sure how to handle/approach this because i want it to be SEMI logical at the very least. I was thinking it would be much like saturns ring however, i wanted it to be enchanted (thinking about it). What i was really wondering is how such a thing would would affect a planet, would it affect its tides similar to the moon? would it somehow affect gravity or other such things???
The second moon - What im wanting this for is mainly story, im wanting a bbeg to pull something roughly moonsized towards earth and the good guy im wanting to move our moon in the way stopping the other one and then the two would be stuck pretty close together with alot of debris floating around it. How would this affect our tides, and by this i mean roughly 2/3rds of one moon and 1/2 the other floating around the planet? How bad would the title be affected?
If you need more details on either let me know, ill be checking back throughout the day.
There is still too much information needed to make a good answer.
The Ring - If the Ring is just like Saturn's - meaning, tons and tons of loose debris and ice, and not solid bands of land - there is little chance they would effect the tides. Mainly because the mass would be equivalent all the way around the planet (at least, in the line of the Ring(s) ), and thus would not effect one section more than others. One thing it would add, though, is a large shadow over portions of the land, depending on the angle of the Ring compared to the angle of the Sun.
The Moon(s) - How big are they? How big is the planet? At what angle do they revolve around the planet? I believe that with only two objects (2 moons), if they were an equivalent distance from the planet, they would revolve at a 60 degree arc from each other (look up legrange points). It is unlikely (unscientific) that they would be 180 degrees away from each other (opposite sites of the planet). Thus, being pretty near each other, you would probably notice things in the tide that were reminiscent of double tides. You would have a high tide/low tide of one moon, followed almost immediately (just a couple hours) by the high tide/low tide of the second moon, and then you would have the supplemental hours remaining until the first moon made it back again. So, if the two moons are, say, six hours apart, people would experience a high tide, low tide, high tide, and low tide within a six hour period, and then the pattern would repeat 18 hours later (assuming a 24-hour day) once the moons made it back to the same place in the sky again.
HOWEVER, if the two moons were different distances from the planet from each other - say, one is 10,000 km away, and the other is 50,000 km away - depending on the masses, the closer moon would probably have a greater effect on the tide, PLUS, they wouldn't have to revolve at that 60 degree arc I mentioned earlier.
Probably lots of other things too, maybe brainface will drop by and add his nickel's worth.
Quote from: Towel Ninjai want it to be SEMI logical
Can these ever work together? ;)
Quote from: IshmaylThe Moon(s) - How big are they? How big is the planet? At what angle do they revolve around the planet? I believe that with only two objects (2 moons), if they were an equivalent distance from the planet, they would revolve at a 60 degree arc from each other (look up legrange points). It is unlikely (unscientific) that they would be 180 degrees away from each other (opposite sites of the planet).
That's not how lagrange points work :P . Lagrange points only come into play with objects that don't move in relation to the planet. For moons they could be at any location and still be fine. The only key here is that they need to be outside a certain distance and are more likely to be on similar orbital planes. Also note that with different masses and the likelihood of different distances, one probably orbits faster than the other. To remove confusion you can put them on a 1:2 resonance. Meaning for every 1 orbit the slower outer moon makes, the faster inner moon makes 2. So if your moons take 2 weeks and 1 week respectively to orbit then you could plot out tides (ignoring solar tides to remove the added calculation). Once every week they align (one week on the same side and one week on opposite sides... it does the same thing gravity wise) and for a day you get an extremely strong tide. In between these times you get more spread out tides that wane down to a certain point before getting powerful again. As for the rings... yea ishy got that about spot on. No discernible gravity influence. However you will get a big shadow. If your planet has seasons that shadow will slowly wander. If it's near the equator though you will get an interesting effect. Beneath it you will have a cold temperate forest with most life not focused on the sun (the sun does have an impact, but not much... it would probably be twilight conditions beneath the ring). So things like giant mushrooms, night animals, carnivorous plants, etc, would thrive. Right outside the ring area would quickly turn into tropical (although due to the seasons the tropical area is probably a mushroom/carnivorous plant forest at "night" just like the above mentioned night forest would be a tropical forest in the "day". Beyond that of course you would have the usual desert climate shifting into temperate up into polar at the planets poles.
Several points:
1) Rings are objects within a planet's Roche limit. In short, they are so close that tidal forces pull them apart, or keep them from coalescing into a moon in the first place. All those billions of ring bits are therefore, by definition, in unstable orbits that eventually fall to the planet. Thus, the planet's equator will be subject to a constant light meteor shower.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn
Saturn is also a good place to look at moons. Saturn's moons do more weird stuff than anywhere else we know. If I remember correctly, there is a pair fairly close in that do a constant do si do, sharing the same orbit.
2) Earth's moon is a fourth the diameter of its parent. Small moons that behave in fun ways will be barely more than bright specks in the sky, and will barely affect the tides at all. Large moons that will noticeably affect tides... it'll be a neat trick finding orbits where they don't eventually collide.
3) The longer a small object stays in orbit around a large object (relative masses), the closer the plane of rotation gets to 90 degrees off the planet's axis, and the more circular the orbit gets. The larger the difference in mass and the closer the orbit, the faster this occurs.
Quoteim wanting a bbeg to pull something roughly moonsized towards earth and the good guy im wanting to move our moon in the way stopping the other one and then the two would be stuck pretty close together with alot of debris floating around it. How would this affect our tides, and by this i mean roughly 2/3rds of one moon and 1/2 the other floating around the planet?
Hmmm.... unless the speeds and angles are *just so*, and they collide VERY gently, then you are going to have mountain sized pieces falling on the planet, possibly at cometary speeds. Read "Lucifer's Hammer", it'll paint you a picture.
A more likely result is that one moon slingshots away from the planet, the other falls on it. In the face of that, tides seem a rather minor issue. I'd be happy if the worst I got out of such an event was unreasonable tides.
If the "capture event" is fairly recent it doesn't matter too much what the tidal effect is *now*, because it will be different next month.
If it's old enough to be stable, nearly all possible multiple satellite orbits require masses small enough that tidal effects are no big deal.
http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/orbits.html
That may give you some ideas.
Now if you want to be evil, you can
Quotedo something unique with the world that they havent seen before
by doing just that. Give them the same old ho hum world they've been in... until something about the size of, oh.... Hong Kong, or Sicily, comes within the Roche limit at cometary speeds, calves into a bunch of pieces, and strikes.
The first they find out about it is when the sky changes color, and the clouds start to move *really fast*.... and then it rains salt water and mud for the next few weeks.
The Ring - Hmm, i would like it to primarily be a ring much like however,(not sure how to work this out) i would like a god or other deific force to have basically made that his domain and has breathed life into the chunks of debris along with putting a protective field around it. (Ill explain that with magic XD) And with a couple of large but not to large chunks ill just go with gravity not being affected, however im interested in what nomadic was saying about the tropical effect it would have if its aligned with the equator.
The Moons - Ok the planet will be roughly the same size as earth maybe 10% bigger? and the moon will also have about a 10% size difference from our moon. The second moon i would like to have maybe 20% smaller then the first, so 10% smaller then ours. Im currently thinking of how i want them to orbit and im leaning towards one closley tailing the other one (so about 1 to 2 o'clock gap if on a clock face). But if i decided against the ill use the 1:2 idea nomadic mentioned.
Just realized I misread what ishy meant (sorry ishy)... yea you could use lagrange points if one is much smaller than the other (but you can still have an 180 degree difference via the L3 lagrange point). A one to two o'clock gap might be a bit small. However that sort of physics thing is so convoluted that you could just hand wave it all.