Abstract
We know that some planets can have rings. Saturn’s rings are especially famous! But could Earth have had a ring around it, too? We wanted to find out! We had two big questions to answer: how could a ring have formed around Earth? And what would happen if there was a ring around our planet? We came up with an idea (a hypothesis) that an asteroid was ripped apart as it passed by our planet millions of years ago. Then, all the dust and debris could have formed a ring around Earth! We hypothesized that meteorites rained down from this ring onto the Earth to form a chain of impact craters. We found lots of evidence to support our hypothesis. Also, there was a very big global cooling event shortly after these impacts. Scientists have not been able to prove why this happened. If the Earth did actually have a ring around it back then, it could explain this global cooling mystery from 446 millions of years ago.
The post What if Earth had a ring like Saturn’s? appeared first on Science Journal for Kids and Teens.
