What if Earth had rings like Saturn?

The view from afar would be somewhat familiar, after all, we know Saturn. Now, can you picture how the rings would appear viewed from Earth’s surface: Paris, Rio, somewhere near Greenland? What would be its appearance at day, by night? You can check it above, and wonder what myths of creations, what religions would it inspire.

A fabulous work of imagination by Roy Prol. Imagination, but not pure fantasy! We don’t have rings around our planet, but we could have. The rings rendered by Prol respect the Roche limit, and the most curious thing is, we may have had rings not that different from those.

With not very pleasant consequences.

Astronomer John O’Keefe speculated that the planet may have formed “a ring system like that of Saturn” at the end of the Eocene, which lasted “between one and several million years”. As can be seen on Prol’s animation, the rings, despite their beauty, would block part of the Sun’s radiation, causing a global cooling.

In the end of the Eocene it may have caused global extinction, but could this be the most beautiful fix for global warming?