More than 460 million years ago, the Earth was perhaps like a small Saturn – ringed

All the traces of large meteorite impacts of that time are within 30 degrees of latitude from the Earth’s equator.

According to the hypothesis, the craters were created when the largest stones of the ring that goes around the Earth hit the Earth as meteorites.

So the ring would have circled above the Earth exactly at the equator.

Same the ring or rings could also be responsible for the Earth’s temperature dropping drastically at that time.

Scientists arrived at the hypothesis when they studied the geological period of Earth’s prehistory known as the Ordovician period.

On Earth, it happened around 485–443 million years ago.

Geologists and planetary scientists presented their findings In Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Researchers according to which the ring could have formed about 466 million years ago.

It consisted of the remains of a giant asteroid. Earth’s own gravity pulled the remains of the asteroid around the Earth as they passed our planet Ray rajan.

Inside the boundary, near the planet or parent body, the smaller celestial body breaks into pieces.

An asteroid, for example, gets stretched by gravity when it gets close enough to a planet.

The song breaks into several small pieces. There are a small number of larger stones in the sea.

The pieces gradually develop into a ring that goes around the equator of the large body.

Over time, the larger pieces of the tire will strike down. They form impact craters on the earth’s surface.

Millions over the years, all the material in the Earth’s ring gradually fell to Earth, scientists assume.

Geologists recognize it at a time when there were more meteorites than usual, he writes in Conversation magazine research director Andrew Tomkins.

He is a professor of planetary science at Monash University in Australia.

The deposits of sedimentary rocks, i.e. stratified rock types, from that period contain many remains of meteorites.

None of the impact sites are close to the polar regions of the time.

Tomkins reminds us that Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus also have rings, albeit dimmer than Saturn.

Under normal conditions, asteroids hitting the Earth can hit any latitude randomly. This can be seen, for example, in the craters of the Moon, Mars and Mercury.

Geologit studied how meteorites hit Earth’s surface They studied the locations of 21 known impact craters.

It was revealed that all the collisions took place within less than 30 degrees of latitude from the Earth’s equator.

However, as much as 70 percent of the areas of the earth’s crust were located outside this area. Of course, the distribution of blows can be a coincidence.

The researchers calculated that the probability of such a coincidence would be quite rare. It is the same as rolling a normal dice 21 times and getting the same result 21 times.

Since the calculation is very improbable, geologists ended up with tires. They could explain not only the equatorial shocks, but also the ancient cooling of our planet.

Ordovikia it was a freezing time for our planet.

It was one of the coldest periods on Earth in the last 500 million years, says Tomkins.

He reminds us that around 465 million years ago, the Earth began to cool drastically.

The number of meteorites hitting the Earth rose sharply then.

Started about 445 million years ago The Hirnantian Ice Age was the coldest period on Earth to date. It ended about 420 million years ago.

Next, Tomkins’ group will model how asteroids break up and how the ring changes over time.

This creates the basis for studying how the ring could cool the climate.