Can an atmosphere englobe a planetary ring?
Would it be possible for the atmosphere of a planet to reach beyond its planetary ring so that earth-like biology could develop on some of the asteroids there?
This question is mainly about whether there could be a life sustaining atmosphere there, not if developing life there would be possible (even though in a larger scale this is obviously what I'm interested in knowing).
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I'll take a completely different approach from what everyone else is saying, because everyone (okay, sans ivy_lynx) seems to be assuming that there are asteroids in planetary rings. This is not true. The objects that make up a planet's rings can come in a range of sizes, but none are as big as an asteroid. There are shepherd moons in the rings of some of the solar system's gas giants, but they are very small moons.
The objects within a gas giant's rings are way to small to hold onto an atmosphere. Fortunately, your question doesn't make that assumption. While these small bodies could not have a gravitationally bound atmosphere, the planet they are orbiting could, and so it is this atmosphere we can assume they are traveling through.
So you would have a bunch of small objects rushing through a cloud of gas (and probably dust from the rings). It wouldn't be too conducive to life. The rings are pretty stable, but there are always chances of collisions. There's a big difference between a moon in a stable orbit and a piece of a ring orbiting inside a ring.
I can go into more detail if you want, but I'm in a bit of a hurry, so all I'll say now is that the area would be too chaotic, and the bodies would be too small to have a chance of being a safe harbor for life. But more information is on the way!
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