I f astronomers had been walking the Earth 466 million years ago, they may have had something special to see. The moon and the planets and the stars and the sun would have looked

A weird number of craters are located close to the equator, and the odds that this is random are incredibly low, researchers say.

The Earth: a ringed planet, much like Saturn, surrounded by a hula hoop of asteroids. The summit of Mount Everest: a tropical, vibrant paradise replete with frolicking shellfish and warm waters encouraging plentiful life.

Scientists suggest Earth once had rings like Saturn, formed from broken asteroid chunks. These rings likely fell to Earth, causing meteor strikes near the equator around 466 million years ago. The study indicates these impacts contributed to a global cooling event known as the Hirnantian Icehouse.

And now, a new study published in the scientific journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters seems to show that Earth itself once had a similar ring. The new study asserts that Earth's ring formed around 466 million years ago and stuck around for around 40 million years before dissipating.

Earth may have had rings. At least that's what a new study published this month claims. Here's what we know so far.

A ring could explain a mysterious arrangement of impact craters near the equator and might even have caused an ice age, according to a new study

Earth might have had a ring system in the past, similar to those of Saturn. Scientists drew these conclusions based on the analysis of the locations of craters on our planet. Scientists, based on the analysis of asteroid craters,