# If you liked Earth you shoulda put a ring on it

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-liked-earth-you-shoulda-put-a-ring-on-it/1007372>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [September 16, 2024, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-liked-earth-you-shoulda-put-a-ring-on-it/1007372 "2024-09-16T23:18:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\
**Post date:** [September 16, 2024, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-liked-earth-you-shoulda-put-a-ring-on-it/1007372/1 "2024-09-16T23:18:32Z")

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Interesting new theory that during the Ordovician the Earth captured an asteroid close and large enough to be torn apart forming a ring that gradually rained down on Earth.

> **[Earth may have had a ring system 466 million years ago](https://phys.org/news/2024-09-earth-million-years.html)**
>
> In a discovery that challenges our understanding of Earth's ancient history, researchers have found evidence suggesting that Earth may have had a ring system that formed around 466 million years ago, at the beginning of a period of unusually intense...

It was already known from a mine in Sweden that small meteorites were raining down at around a hundred times the current rate at around the same time

> **[The story of the fossil meteorites](https://www.astronomy.com/science/the-story-of-the-fossil-meteorites/)**
>
> What four small pieces of rock can teach us about the history of the solar system.

The original idea was that this rain was the result of a major collision in the asteroid belt

> **[Ordovician meteor event](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordovician_meteor_event)**
>
> The Ordovician meteor event was a dramatic increase in the rate at which L chondrite meteorites fell to Earth during the Middle Ordovician period, about 467.5±0.28 million years ago. This is indicated by abundant fossil L chondrite meteorites in a quarry in Sweden and enhanced concentrations of ordinary chondritic chromite grains in sedimentary rocks from this time. 
> According to a 2019 study, this temporary increase in the impact rate could have been caused by the destruction of the L chondrite...

I’m not sure how the new theory reflects on that–maybe the ringmaker could have been the whole source of the rain, invalidating the collision theory, maybe both could be results of the collision.

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**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\
**Post date:** [September 17, 2024, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-liked-earth-you-shoulda-put-a-ring-on-it/1007372/2 "2024-09-17T00:15:22Z")

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My first (and mostly irrelevant) comment is, this is one of the weirdest comparisons I’ve ever read in a science article:

> The chances of this happening are like tossing a three-sided coin (if such a thing existed) and getting tails 21 times.

WTF does this mean? Are they trying to say the chances are 1 in 10 billion? Why not just say so? Or if they had to make a coin-tossing analogy, why not say it’s like tossing a (2-sided) coin and getting tails 33 times? How does referring to a nonexistent three-sided coin help anyone understand this?