Jun 9 1980
From The Space Library
The Earth 34 million years ago might have had a ring like those that circle Saturn today, said Dr. John A. O'Keefe of GSFC's Laboratory for Astronomy and Solar Physics. A sudden event 34 million years ago, known to geologists as the terminal Eocene event, caused dramatic climate changes in Earth's temperate zones, dropping northern-hemisphere winter temperatures about 35°F (20°C). Botanical studies revealed that the temperature change, the most profound climatic event between 65 million and 2 million years ago, occurred at the end of the Eocene, but it had no acceptable explanation as yet.
O'Keefe noted that the changes coincided with a massive fall from outer space of tektites (glass meteorites) possibly from an eruption on Earth's Moon; studies of these tektites showed similarities to rocks brought from the Moon. Whatever the source, the tektites that hit Earth made a path around the globe from. the eastern United States across the Pacific to the Philippines.
Tektites that missed the Earth would have formed a ring like the rings around Saturn; such a ring in the winter would block the Sun's rays in the northern hemisphere when the Sun was below the equator, and the shadow cast by the ring would lower winter temperatures. The ring disappeared when forces (such as pressure of sunlight or drag of the atmosphere) pulled it either into the atmosphere, where some particles burned and others fell to Earth, or upward into space away from the Earth. (NASA Release 80-86)
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