Earth had rings like Saturn 466 million years ago says research

What if there are beautiful rings floating around our Earth like the ones seen around Saturn? If scientists are to be believed, this has happened before. A new research has claimed that at some point of time there must have been a ring system around our Earth like the one seen around Saturn. This must have been about 46.6 crore years ago. So how would the Earth’s rings look like? Let’s know what the report says about this.

Saturn is currently the only planet in the solar system that has beautiful rings around it. But Earth and Planetary Science Letters (Earth and Planetary Science LettersA new research has been published in ) which imagines that there are rings around the Earth. These rings must have existed about 46.6 million years ago. Where did these rings come from, and where did they go?

In fact, the research says that that time must have been a time of heavy meteor shower. This has been called Ordovician impact. In which a large number of meteors must have fallen from the sky to the earth simultaneously. Andy Tomkins, the lead author of the study, Monash Universitystudied the position of 21 asteroid impact craters dating back to the Ordovician period. What the researchers found was surprising. All these craters were located within 30 degrees on the equator. Whereas 70 percent of the Earth’s land surface remained away from this region.

The research team speculated that a large asteroid must have come very close to the Earth, which must have crossed its Roche Limit. Due to this, the asteroid must have broken into many small pieces. These small pieces must have spread around the Earth’s orbit. Slowly over time, these pieces must have fallen back to the surface, which would have formed these craters.

This new research seems to take the boundaries of geology much further. Researchers believe that this ring system would have also affected the Earth’s climate because by gathering in this way, they would have blocked the sunlight and a shadow would have spread over an area on the Earth. Due to this, a period of cold would have occurred here which is called the Hernesian Icehouse. This was a period in which the Earth would have been the coldest in the last 500 million years.