If Saturn flew by Earth

[Blue Ghost]

A Saturn flyby of Earth. What would it be like? Here's a video that answers that question;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY2jv4GWUhQ

 

[flykiller]

cool. but if saturn actually were that close you wouldn't be able to see it, it would be obscured by the vast dust clouds and several hundred feet of water swirling overhead.

 

[aramis]

cool. but if saturn actually were that close you wouldn't be able to see it, it would be obscured by the vast dust clouds and several hundred feet of water swirling overhead.

The math doesn't bear that out. The 1G line of saturn is 1.03 diameters or so. The tidal stress would not act fast enough to create that much destruction... but the post pass vulcanism would be catastrophic.

It would yank a good bit of the exosphere...

Note that single-pass is VERY different from long-term stable. The Roche limit is a long term stable point. Note that several jovian moons are actually inside the fluid body roche limit; they do constantly lose mass to their orbit... but they are not "immediately killed" by it. To actually yank surface water off the surface would require passing within about 750 km of the top of the clouds of saturn. It would, however, create some monster tides.

 

[Blue Ghost]

I think the video states that it depends on the distance, but that's assuming they got their stuff right.

 

[aramis]

I think the video states that it depends on the distance, but that's assuming they got their stuff right.

The main rings are inside the roche limit.They took in the view to under a diameter of saturn... but to get actual lifting of loose water, sand, etc, you'd need a slow rise to near-neutral (IE, surface of earth at 1.03 saturn diameters from saturn's core). Otherwise, it's tidal heating resulting in vulcanism and atmospheric stripping (like Io or Enceladus), which takes a LONG time to wear down to a surface G low enough to escape matter.

Note also: the roche limit isn't a hard and fast line - it's dependent upon the densities of both objects, and the implied hardness and gravitation that goes with density.

In other words, if we had a saturn size GG pass by to 0.5 LS, we'd lose a lot of atmosphere to it, but probably only as much rock as the active volcanoes spewed forth during the encounter. If it dragged us off with it, which would require a very specific vector range, we'd see a massive rise in vulcanism, and the moon would no longer be bound to us....