Earth Used To Have a Rings Like Saturn 466 Million Years Ago, Scientists Found Evidence

Our planet may have had its own ring system that lasted for tens of millions of years – scientists found evidence. The discovery, which is truly mind-blowing and could represent a significant scientific breakthrough, is described in research by Andrew G. Tomkins, Erin L. Martin, and Peter A. Cawood, published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

When did Earth have rings like Saturn, and how did it lose them

The paper suggests that during the Ordovician period, about 466 million years ago, Earth had a ring, similar to Saturn’s, but with significant differences.

This ring system is likely to be formed by the breakup of an asteroid passing within Earth’s Roche limit – the distance from our planet within which the Earth’s tidal forces exceed the asteroid’s self-gravitation, causing it to disintegrate. These smaller and bigger fragments moved around and gradually evolved into a ring orbiting the equator of our planet.

So, in fact it was a debris ring, formed from parts of a huge asteroid.

A Pattern of Craters Reveals the Truth

How is it even possible to find out that there was a ring around our planet so long ago?

At that time, a lot of meteorites started hitting Earth. As a result, a lot of craters formed in a relatively short period. Researchers examined the 21 asteroid impact craters. Using models of how tectonic plates moved in the past, scientists mapped out where all these craters were. 

They found all of the craters are non-randomly situated, they are on continents that were close to the equator in this period. According to Andrew G. Tomkins, one of the authors of the mentioned research paper: “Under normal circumstances, asteroids hitting Earth can hit at any latitude, at random, as we see in craters on the Moon, Mars and Mercury.” So, scientists made a conclusion that all these 21 craters are related to each other. 

The findings of this detailed analysis are likely to be evidence of a ring around Earth. Over several tens of millions of years, the asteroid’s fragments gradually fell to Earth, creating the pattern of craters closer to the equator.

A Sunshade That Caused Global Cooling

Further analysis has led the scientists to one more interesting discovery: the shade from the ring may have caused global cooling. 

According to previous research, around 465 million years ago, our planet began cooling dramatically. 20 years later, it was in the Hirnantian Ice Age, the coldest event in the last 540 million years.

According to the scientists, the ring would have been around the equator. Given that Earth’s axis is tilted relative to its orbit around the Sun, the ring would have cast a shadow over parts of the planet’s surface. This shading, in turn, may have caused global cooling, as less sunlight reached the planet’s surface.

For now, it is only a hypothesis, and scientists are now working on finding more evidence to prove that the ring system around Earth has resulted in global cooling that led to the Hirnantian Ice Age.