What ifs

[KAL 9000]

What if Saturn was magically transported to Earth's orbit and Earth and the Moon were moved into orbit around it? How different would life be here?

[Mitchz95]

Our days would get longer as a result of the tidal forces. Not sure other than that. For sure it wouldn't be a painless transition.

[insert_name]

saturns van allen belts could be a huge problem

[Findthepin1]

I will simulate that in Universe Sandbox 2.

[Scotius]

Due to the deep gravity well around Saturn all dV calculations for interstellar travel would be useless. Any ship going interplanetary would have to leave Earth, and then escape Saturn's well. Would that be a good exchange for breathtaking view at a huge, ringed gas giant?

[Findthepin1]

I did the simulation for 320 years and a few months. Earth and the moon were stable at 2000000 and 1000000 km respectively. Venus' orbit moved inwards about 0.01 AU over the time period, and regularly shifts 0.01 AU in either direction near Saturn. Since this question only asked me to move Saturn, Earth, and Moon, I left all of Saturn's moons where they were and that resulted in a second asteroid belt between Jupiter and Uranus. Most of the things in the belt were in elliptical orbits. Titan became a new dwarf planet (it is larger than Mercury but is now accompanied in this simulated year 2334 by an asteroid belt, which it hasn't cleared so it is still a dwarf planet).

[insert_name]

also, if life was on encladus this could be disastrous if it were to be spat up in a cryovolcano and hit earth

[MircoMars]

34 minutes ago, Scotius said:

Would that be a good exchange for breathtaking view at a huge, ringed gas giant?

Yes! The view would be amazing. living here not so much

the day/ night cycle would change a lot. beside the chance of tidal locking and having one long hot day and one long cold night. there would be a long dark period, when earth is in saturn's shadow no matter what. summer and winter would largely differ and be globally uniform, because the change in distance to the sun. earth would clean out at least a part of the rings. ocean tides would be significantly larger and more irregular. although I don't know if luna would stay in a stable orbit and/or intact. so perhaps we would have a star orbited y a gas giant with rings, which is orbited by a semi-habitable rock with rings.

As I said the view would be amazing

edit: oh man we would be in the rings, we would see a  huge saturn with a belt deviding the sky. what would the old greeks say to that?

Edited December 4, 2015 by MircoMars

[RainDreamer]

I wonder how that would throw off orbits of other bodies in the solar system.

[Findthepin1]

As I said, it changed Venus' orbit slightly.

Edited December 5, 2015 by Findthepin1

[RainDreamer]

Maybe instead of racing toward the moon, we would have a race toward one of the objects in the belt.

[lajoswinkler]

Earth would get blasted by solar wind. Our magnetosphere would be disfigured. Saturn is able to concentrate enough solar wind particles where it is now - imagine it being this close to the Sun. We'd have auroras everywhere.

[Nibb31]

Any life would be fried by the radiation, so the Earth would be as barren as Saturn's other moons.

[PB666]

Ah the optimism, i suspect that the passing of earth around saturn given maxwells equations would eventually impart a magnetic field around saturn. It would be disasterous. The lagrangian l2 would be close to mars, don't know if mars orbit would be stable, its moons would prolly be torn from its orbit, saturns rings would mean a constant asteroid impact issues, and saturn would be a big attractor for asteroid belt strays, the earth being a shield satellite would take a disproportionate number. 

 

 

[peadar1987]

The radiation would not be catastrophic for life on the earth's surface with our atmosphere alone, even if we forget any magnetic field the earth might have. This post is probably relevant: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/52874-would-laythe-really-be-habitable-redux/&page=4#comment-771322

The figures I crunched there are for Laythe. The earth's atmosphere is thicker and extends higher. Life at sea level would be absolutely grand. If you climbed too high in the atmosphere you would start to run into problems, but a lack of international air travel isn't really a catastrophe

[KAL 9000]

On December 4, 2015 at 3:12:34 PM, Findthepin1 said:

I did the simulation for 320 years and a few months. Earth and the moon were stable at 2000000 and 1000000 km respectively. Venus' orbit moved inwards about 0.01 AU over the time period, and regularly shifts 0.01 AU in either direction near Saturn. Since this question only asked me to move Saturn, Earth, and Moon, I left all of Saturn's moons where they were and that resulted in a second asteroid belt between Jupiter and Uranus. Most of the things in the belt were in elliptical orbits. Titan became a new dwarf planet (it is larger than Mercury but is now accompanied in this simulated year 2334 by an asteroid belt, which it hasn't cleared so it is still a dwarf planet).

Oh, Saturn's moons stay the same and Earth isn't in Saturn's Van Allen belts. Let's say it's tidally locked so that Saturn is directly overhead over, say, Utah in the USA.

[peadar1987]

Well the orbit at 2,000,000km will have a period of 33 days, so life would presumably have evolved according to completely different circadian rhythms.

Edit: Although I'm guessing that the tidal locking would actually result in Central Asia facing Saturn, as that is where the bulk of the earth's land mass is located.

I had a play around with this: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sunearth.html?iso=20150622T0638 and it looks like most of the Americas would never see Saturn. Imagine sailing over the horizon and that just appearing slowly ahead of you! Especially if you had no idea it had ever even existed

Edited December 7, 2015 by peadar1987

[GluttonyReaper]

This is a nice video, which shows the view (although this assumes the planets are at the same distance as the Moon):