C ould Earth once have had a planetary ring like the ones around Saturn? Scientists from Monash University in Australia think so. In a recent paper they identify 450m-year-old craters that lie close to Earth’s historical equator.

Earth and Saturn might be a lot more similar than previously thought. In a new study, a team of researchers suggests that 466 million years ago, a ring system made up of asteroid remnants may have surrounded our planet,

Saturn’s rings are among the most beautiful features on any planet within our galaxy. Recently, a group of Australian scientists found that the Earth may have been surrounded by its own rings millions of years ago.

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.

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 ring would have gradually fallen to Earth as meteorites, correlating to a spike of impacts seen in the geological record.

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.

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

Evidence suggests Earth had a ring system 466 million years ago, causing a surge in meteorite impacts and possibly influencing the planet's climate.