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Comment by hrjet | Hacker News Reader

Whoa! I guess the big news here is that rings around such a gravitationally weak body would be a rare occurrence in nature... indicating a high possibility of an artificially designed / constructed structure.

Edit: Not sure if I am being downvoted for stating the obvious or the incredulous :)

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You're exactly right. A race of beings sprung up out of the mud of their home world, discovered science, space travel, faster than light travel, decided to visit a solar system and place an artificial ring around a rock in the distant outer reaches of a solar system, and then... profit?

Actually ceramic materials make the best protection against missiles like bullets or meteorites. So an advanced race of star travelers would not use metal-skinned ships, they would coat their vessels with a thick layer of porous rock. All we can see is that outer protective skin. Inside the star travelers live generation after generation patiently waiting until they find a habitable planet to take over.

And then they immediately die because life is designed for a planet, not the other way around, unless by habitable you mean a planet that is uninhabitable, artificially made habitable.

It's our monolith!

A race of beings sprung up out of the mud of their home world, discover science, space travel, decide to visit a nearby rock, and place some plastic glued to a metal pole on it, and then... profit?

If this is an artificial item - a big honking if - there's not enough known about it to draw any significant conclusions. It could be their version of a flag. It could be a relay satellite. It could be a billboard to advertise McJxrqins.

Its a long range antenna in the big network in he sky. Currently receiving Discovery Channel and Fox Sports Saturn.

You can have anything with rings in space

Or better, anything can orbit gravitationally the lightest of objects (as long as things like electrostatic forces are not overwhelming it)

Anything with a velocity bigger than a certain velocity (not sure how this is called - orbital velocity) and smaller than the escape velocity can orbit something in space (in this case atmosphere is not a problem)

Orbit yes; but ring formation I imagine would require a delicate balance of forces to maintain equilibrium. Which would imply this ring is either very young or formed by an extraordinary coincidence or umm.. curated.

wtf do you really believe the best possible explanation for a phenomena you know barely anything about which isn't outside of physical possibility (merely a supposed low likelihood) is "alien design"? Really?

When theories were built that way we used to call it "religion" not "science". Alien attributions seem pretty much a modern sci-fi/fantasy religion to me.

Imagine aliens racing space cars in a circle around an asteroid, on a track made of ice, it's the Niribu 500 :)

That is a gigantic leap.

For mankind.

It's a prototype Ringworld.

Or a Culture Orbital...

So that's where ___ went!

-----

(insert as you like from the below, or reply with your own)

• the body of Jimmy Hoffa

• Saddam's WMD's [0]

• Elvish Presley

• Michael Jackson

• the needed parts to finish Healthcare.gov

-----

[0] I know, I know. They went to Syria, and Isreal destroyed some of them. It's a joke.

Do you also believe comets are likely artificially designed/constructed in nature?

They aren't as rare as rings; hence no.

So you're not saying it's aliens... but it's aliens?

More importantly, this website is not reddit... Right?

It will become reddit if it is treated as such

With an even shittier interface.

How did these comments got approved anyways?

A bit of light humour sometimes isn't a bad thing :) It's called "boredom hacking" :) We know it'll have nothing to do with aliens, we can only hope...until one day it's real and they kill us all :)

Did that actually go into effect after all?

No. It was changed to be off by default, with moderators able to turn it on per-thread as needed. I haven't seen it on, even when people are actively insulting each other.

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