![E146: What if Earth had a ring like Saturn's? [SJK Audio Edition]](https://substackcdn.com/feed/podcast/710013/post/152677893/2d38b323009090e77f7f6fd021db4f3d.jpg)
E146: What if Earth had a ring like Saturn's? [SJK Audio Edition]
SJK Audio Edition · Miranda Wilson
Audio is streamed directly from the publisher (api.substack.com) as published in their RSS feed. Play Podcasts does not host this file. Rights-holders can request removal through the copyright & takedown page.
Show Notes
Read this article at: https://www.sciencejournalforkids.org/articles/what-if-earth-had-a-ring-like-saturns/ or watch at: https://youtu.be/v9w0XqSlK8A
Summary: Scientists investigated whether Earth used to have a ring around it and how this would have affected our planet millions of years ago.
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.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencejournalforkids.substack.com