Rings Around Earth From Ancient Meteorites

HorsePunchKid writes "According to an article on CNN (SNL version), ancient meteorites may have glanced off of the surface and shattered, causing rings around the Earth. These rings, which may have persisted for hundreds of thousands of years, could have had a profound effect on the climate in tropical regions, where the rings would block out light from the Sun. Still rather speculative, but the theory may help explain some patterns observed in the geological record. The idea has been around for a while, and some scientists are skeptical."

Comments

I still favour the fire theories...

[purduephotog]

Given a large impact that engulfs some 20% of the land mass in flame...

Said impact ejecta would be thrown up and into the stratosphere, circle, and land somewhere opposite (say 3/4) around the globe. More impacts, more fire. Lots of soot to block out light.

I can see a 'ring' of debris specifically targetting the tropics region, but i just have trouble dealing with the numbers of objects required to decrease the light that significantly resulting in a sphere of Earths size being cooled that significantly.

Suffice to say, the ring is there, but I'd still throw my support behind half the planet burning up as a more tangible reason.

rings and gravity and stuff

[io333]

Here is a weird Usenet post I put up a few months ago just to show the world that I am clueless.

But I thought it was an interesting post at the time & I'd love to see it get modded up 'cause the resulting conversation between some of the even less cluefull here I would find entertaining.

about skepticism

[benploni]

> and some scientists are skeptical.

ALL scientists are skeptical. It's a basic requirement of the scientific method, and a reason it works wso damn well.

Re:about skepticism

[Burgundy Advocate]

Unfortunately, it usually doesn't work that way. Scientists divide themselves into their seperate camps, and sometimes turn a blind eye to the inconsistencies in their own theories.

The sad fact is that scientists are human. They have their own allegiances -- not always to the scientific method. Some are quite petty.

"a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it"
--Max Planck

Thomas Kuhn had a lot to say about this. Learn more here.

Re:Wrong

[Xouba]

In fact, the climate change is not totally man made. There has been a lot of climate changes along the history of Earth, and there will be yet a few more until the End of Time (tm).

I read some of this in a page about paleography, but I don't find the link now :-/ I'll try to explain, anyway. It made sense when I read it, so I guess it makes sense now too :-)

Earth has had warm and cool times. There were some times (like the ones the dinosaurs lived) of warm global temperature, reaching mid temperatures of 20. This means crocodiles (sp?) and palm trees near the poles, tropical humid weather all across the globe, etc.

And then there were the glacial periods, which we know a bit more: hairy rhinoceros, mammoths, snow a go-go, and that stuff. Man ("homo sapiens", I mean) appeared after one of these, IIRC.

The times of transition from one to another were usually marked by global extinctions and another funny events.

So, in my humble and not remotely knowledgeable opinion, global warming is caused by men *accelerating* a natural proccess, not *creating* it. It's bad anyway, but it's different :-)

Re:Wrong

[letxa2000]

Why Bother??? Because even if it is only 5-10 years that gives us 5 -10 years for my children to live and possibly come up with a way to reverse the damage done by over consumption and the Oil companies lack of caring about the future.

Re-Read the thread and the parent you replied to. He is saying that even if we don't burn fossil fuels we might be on the verge of an ice age. If anything, burning fossil fuels might help warm the planet slightly and postpone the next ice age.

There are plenty of other reasons to bother but I feel the main one is because we created (with the help of our parents) this mess and just sitting idly by is just plain lazy and stupid.

Massive climate change has happened in the past without man's help. And some of those changes have been much more extreme than what we have witnessed in the last 150 years.

Complacency isn't an excuse it is a cop out.

No, but recognition of the immense power of mother nature and our miniscule importance IS.

Sorry I know I am going on a rant but my god people wake up and smell the CO2, do something about it, ride the bus, take a bike every little bit helps!

Every bus you take, every bike you ride contributes just that much more to quickening the next ice age.

I believe that dealing with a little extra heat in our enviroment is more manageable than dealing with ice a mile thick. YMMV.

Re:Wrong

[kanthoney]

You appear to believe that the melting ice caps will cause global extinction. They won't. Simply move your children further inland, and they'll be quite safe.

PS I walk to work. Is that OK?

Can I be skeptical, too?

[shimmin]

I'm not a planetary scientist, but I'm still skeptical. So a rock gets blasted off the surface of the earth with some ballistic trajectory. Unless something acts on it near apogee to circularize its orbit, that orbit will return to the point it began (which lies inside the atmosphere).

So most of the rocks from such a collision will either be on an escape trajectory to become interplanteary debris, or secondary meterites that will fall over the next few days.

Where's the circularizing force in these models to put debris into long-term stable orbits?