2024-09-20 17:18:34
The Earth may once have been surrounded by a ring like Saturn. This is suggested by research results that reveal further exciting details.
All of the large planets in our solar system have rings. The most famous celestial body is Saturn. Uranus, Neptune and Jupiter also have a ring system. And astronomers have long suspected that Mars was once surrounded by a ring as well.
And the Earth? Around 460 million years ago – in the Ordovician period – it could also have had a ring system made up of countless small chunks of material. This is suggested by the results of a team of researchers who published their studies in the journal “Earth and Planetary Science Letters”.
The scientists examined 21 asteroid impact craters, all of which were probably formed during that time. At that time, there was a series of strikingly large numbers of impacts on Earth, about whose origin little was known until now, but which led to the extinction of species on our planet.
The new research suggests that the craters were not caused by rocks coming from far away, but by the disintegration of an asteroid ring that had formed around the Earth.
This is indicated by the impact sites, which are located in a narrow band at the equator – and can still be detected and assigned despite the plate shifts of the past millions of years.
In the deposits from that time, the researchers found material that, due to its nature, could only have come from space.
As the researchers further write, the ring could even have had a significant impact on the Earth’s climate. Because a large part of the Earth was in the shadow of the asteroid debris, this could have triggered an ice age.
It is known that the temperature on Earth dropped by around 8 degrees at that time – despite an increased CO2 content. And researchers have long puzzled over what could have caused this frost period lasting millions of years, which triggered the so-called Ordovician mass extinction.
Part of this mystery may now have been solved. However, it is not yet possible to say exactly how the ring around the Earth came into being. Researchers suspect that a huge asteroid disintegrated as it flew past the Earth. Further research is now needed to clarify this.