
Scientists have just made a shocking revelation that suggests Earth had a Saturn-like ring system 466 million years ago. This ancient ring system is believed to have formed after the planet captured and destroyed a passing asteroid.
A team of scientists, headed by Andy Tomkins, the head of planetary science at Monash University in Australia, studied 21 impact sites around the globe. It led them to conclude that nearly all craters, dating from 488 million to 443 million years ago, were likely formed by a collision of debris from a single large asteroid crashing on Earth.
The asteroid was measured to be roughly 7.7 miles across, and it broke apart once it reached Earth's neighbourhood. Pieces settled into an orbital debris ring around Earth's equator, not unlike those found around Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune.
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Material from the ring gradually fell to Earth over millions of years, causing a spurt in meteorite impacts.
Researchers have found debris layers of meteorites in sedimentary rocks from this time. The meteorite debris that was so exposed was less cosmic radiation than the meteorites falling on Earth today.
The group has identified several signatures of tsunamis during the period of Ordovician and validates the capture-and-break-up scenario.
If Earth had a ring like Saturn, the climate of our planet would have been different. It would block sunlight, and in turn, cool the world down.
This might have been a reason behind the Hirnantian Ice Age, which has been the coldest in 500 million years.
Although an interesting hypothesis, experts think that there is a requirement for more data to ascertain if Earth had indeed such an old ring system. It is through the search for the common signature in the asteroid grains across the impact craters that this theory will be established.