A new study suggests that about 466 million years ago, the Earth could have been surrounded by a giant ring of space debris similar to that of Saturn. This is reported by Earth and Planetary Science Letters, UNN reports.
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It is noted that scientists have studied 21 asteroid craters from the period of the "Ordovician impact peak" 466 million years ago and noticed that they were strangely located in a narrow strip of the Earth close to the equator. And this is despite the fact that more than 70% of the planet's continental crust was outside this region at the time.
Asteroids reportedly usually fall in random locations, so the impact craters are distributed evenly, as seen on the Moon and Mars.
Researchers suggest that the impact pattern near the equator was formed after a large asteroid collided with the Earth millions of years ago.
Scientists theorize that this giant asteroid broke up due to tidal forces and formed a ring of debris around our planet, similar to the rings around Saturn.
Over millions of years, material from this ring gradually fell to Earth, creating the surge of meteorite impacts observed in the geologic record,
The researchers also say that layers in the sedimentary rocks from this period contain an extraordinary amount of meteorite debris. They suggest that such a ring could have cast a shadow over the Earth with "potential climate consequences.
By blocking sunlight, the ring may have contributed to a significant global cooling known as the Hirnant Glacier, recognized as one of the coldest periods in the last 500 million years.